“Sometimes there is a wellspring or river of something beautiful and possible in the tenderest sense that comes to and from the most broken of children, and I was one of these, and whatever is was, I can't name, I can only thank. Perhaps it is the water of life that saves us, after all.”

“I know I can't make time slow down, can't hold our life as it is in a freeze frame or slow my children's inexorable journeys into adulthood and lives of their own. But I can celebrate those journeys by bearing witness to them, by paying attention, and, perhaps most of all, by carrying on with my own growth and becoming. Now it dawns on me that the only way I can figure out what I'm meant to be doing is to try to understand who I'm meant to be...I will not waste this life, not one hour, not one minute. I will not take for granted the blessing of our being here...I will give thanks...”

“Is it possible to take river water back after it has mixed into the sea? The river and the sea are united and one now.”

“We threw ourselves at that wild river every day and most days it tossed us all harmlessly skyward like well-loved children. After a while that does something to you.”

“Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.”

“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.”