Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I'd pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person--a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences--a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we've ever known.

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?

There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.

How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.

It's your time to live, don't mess it up.

You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.