The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.

I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.

You are who you choose to be.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.