“Ideas we don't know we have, have us.”

“Not as we are but as we must appear, contractual ghosts of pity; not as we desire life, but as they would have us live, set apart in timeless colloquy. So it is required; so we bear witness, despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,each distant sphere of harmony forever poised, unanswerable. It is without consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or if it is not, all echoes are the same in such eternity. Then tell me, love,how that should comfort us-or anyone dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place crying to the end ”I have not finished.”From 'Funeral Music”

“One of the first things we learn from our teachers is discernment: the ability to tell truth from fiction, to know when we have lost our center and how to find it again. Discernment is also one of the last things we learn, when we feel our paths diverge and we must separate from our mentors in order to stay true to ourselves.”

“We refuse to believe that which we don't understand.”

“So what to do? . . . She shook her head impatiently. Choice is a largely delusional concept, her tutor used to say. Whether in politics, morals or shopping, we have far less than we imagine. In the end what we have to do often doesn't even figure on our list of pseudo-options.”

“I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.”

“We, the survivors of the crossing, clung to the beast that had stolen us away. Not a soul among us had wanted to baord that ship, but once out on open waters, we held on for dear life. The ship became an extension of our own rotting bodies. Those who were cut from the heaving animal sank quick to their deaths, and we who remained attached wilted more slow as poison festered in our bellies and bowels. We stayed with the beast until new lands met our feet, and we stumbled down the long plants just before the poison became fatal. Perhaps here in this new land, we would keep living.”