You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. Pablo Neruda

Your kind of love, once given, is never lost. You are alive and luminous in my head. Except when I fail to listen, you will speak through me when I face some crisis of feeling or sympathy or consideration for others. You are a curb on my natural impatience and competitiveness and arrogance. When I have been less than myself, you make me ashamed even as you forgive me. Wallace Stegner, Letter Much Too Late

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

Writing goes badly much of the time, our hands arthritic with the muttering of inner critics, the long boney finger pointing down from the sky — “We told you not to tell.” But writing can save your life — telling can save your life. And maybe help other people save their lives, too. Anne Lamott

We were golden … until we weren’t. Kevin Luby, A Life Short & Loud