“She never understood that love -- especially that of a child -- was the most necessary weight you can endure in life, even if it hurts, even if it tugs bags under the skin of your eyes. Without it, the soul skitters to the edge of the world and teeters there, confused.”

“Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.”

“Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?”

“You never know the hurt others endure in this world behind the closed windows of their life, or the joy a simple act of kindness can bring.”

“Nothing happens carelessly. We’re not brought into the world without reason, even though we may never understand the reason. An infant that lives an hour, that dies before it can lay eyes on those who made it, even that soul did not live without purpose: this is my sudden certainty.”

“You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.”