“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”

“We're killers, all of us: We kill our lives, our past selves, the things that mattered. We bury them under slogans and excuses.”

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”

“These programs and reading series are the fruit of an intellectually exhausted literacy industry that lost its way long ago, even as we mutely accepted its misguided agenda - to complicate reading and literacy so that we will purchase its programs and materials.”

“In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.”

“Live all you can. It's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do -- but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so -- and now I'm old. It's too late. It has gone past me -- I've lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!”