—I’M VERY TIRED, BUT I STILL LOVE YOU

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers at the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, that hollow space in your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go.” Jamie Anderson

“Aging is a privilege.”  Rene Zellweger

“Maybe you need a poem about grace.” Robert Hass

“He was never interested in what we did yesterday.  It was always about today, about now.”  Roy Disney, on his brother Walt

"We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it." Marilynne Robinson

“Everyone dies one day.  Everyone.  Even wolves.  But not books.  Not words.  Words don’t die.”   Three-year-old, Jack Hazelton

"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." Carl Sagan

“I think a long time ago, I learned how important it was to show up a little bit early, Be ready to go, you know? And to respect the whole process, and I think that you can respect the whole process even when the other people don’t.” -Tom Hanks

“Hands are unbearably beautiful.  They hold onto things.  They let things go.”  Mary Ruefle

“You can’t move fast enough to outrun grief.” Gina Frangello

“Don’t tell anybody anything.  If you do, you start to miss everybody.” -Holden

“Maybe this could just be a story that makes you feel better.” Tom Junold

“We’re not writing for children, we’re writing for the child still inside of all of us.” Paul Williams

“The good news is I’m better, for the time we spent together, the bad news is you’re gone.” Paul Williams

"The poet has an obligation to dissect his own corpse and reveal the symptoms of its illness to the world.” -Natsume Sosaki

“My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.” Dalai Lama

"“I know of a little girl who was drawing with crayons in school,” he said. “The teachers asked her about her drawing, and the little girl said, ‘Oh, I am making a picture of God.’ The teacher said, ‘But no one knows what God looks like.’ The little girl smiled and answered, ‘They will now.’ ”

“I live in gratitude and trust.” -Paul Williams

"You say you want to write. But you don’t want to soil your dress, do you? Or mangle your flesh, court insomnia and hunt nightmares in a seamless seclusion that requires CPR? Of course not. You thought writing a reasonable profession. You thought you could wear linen and gloves. You didn’t realize the habitual hazards of this art form, the contagious derangement, the exposure and subsequent addiction to toxins, the delirium of thirty hours in stark communion with a self that is insatiable for discovery. In a week you don’t recognize your face in the mirror. Lamplight has burned your skin like radiation. You crave cutting tools and poisons. And that is just the beginning." -Kate Braverman

“Still absorbing the news that Kate Braverman died last night in Santa Fe. Some women change your life.” -Janet Finch

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." James Baldwin

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” -Margaret Atwood*

"It's not enough to just survive something, that's not the point of life. You have got to thrive." Meghan Markel

“Getting older is a fascinating gift. And I am deeply grateful for it.” Alina Stefanescu

“I paint flowers so they will not die.” Frida Kahlo