“We packed our trunks and suitcases, prepared for our natural and necessary moves away from home. Outwardly, we breathed sighs of relief at the somber comfort of growing up. Inwardly, we held our breath and tried to stand as still as possible, afraid we might be the only ones who didn’t yet feel the promised call of adulthood.”

“From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.”

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.”

“We can’t run away from what defines our fates. Who we are and what we believe in grow from the roots of our past, no matter how much we might try to deny it.”

“Every exhalation is an expulsion of some part of our finite store of life, and also a sigh of relief that the grave is closer by one tedious, depressing pulse...Each time we breathe, we fear that it's our last breath and it will chill us all the way to the void.”

“Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?”