Though I think and speak of greater becoming, I, too, am an infinite work in progress.

"Someone was coming through the velvet.

Can't help but wonder, as I wander, at the dusk of dawn, whether I'll weather, the oncoming storm.

No matter how painful it may be, we must learn to face our shortcomings with open arms.

The first step necessary in addressing the shortcomings of our lives is to acknowledge them.

Always remember that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming freight train. You are the freight train. Choose to gently lay down your own tracks and keep going.

We don't know what's coming next, but we can go to it with purpose. We can go to it dancing.

One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me not to rest so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

"You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation.

I'm not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.

The excitement of dreams coming true is beyond the description of words.

Don't ever ask for permission to follow your dreams. Follow them no matter fucking what. It's important. We have one life here and you are the author of your story, more than anybody else. You are much more responsible for your dreams coming true or not than anyone else in your life you have contacted with. So, dream big, work hard, and make it happen no matter what.

Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.

If we are not allowed to deal with small problems, we will be destroyed by slightly larger ones. When we come to understand this, we live our lives not avoiding problems, but welcoming them them as challenges that will strengthen us so that we can be victorious in the future.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ...

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.

When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a Goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time-the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes-when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever-there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

"I will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.

I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.

Some people will never be highly successful not because of their lack of competence but because of the lack of welcoming new ideas and new people into their lives.

"Months start to become years-- crying and coming out of the