When you start to crack open, don't waste a moment gathering your old self up into something like you knew before. Let your new self splash like sunlight into every dark place and laugh and cry and make sounds you never made & thank all that is holy for the gift.
I hope someday you see this is all life wants: for you to be your own kind of beautiful & not the kind that makes you forget who you are.
Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.
Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.
I've always like the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be, so it's easier to remember who I am.
There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.
I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my children & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.
Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life.
There are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good.
I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.
If you hold on to the handle, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.
Falling into Place: deciding everything is falling into place perfectly as long as you don't get too picky about what you mean by place. Or perfectly.
Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.
I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts, but they needed constant attention and one day I decided I had better things to do.
There is nothing more I ask of this life than this moment, exactly so. And suddenly forever seems like too short a time.
There are some days when no matter what I say it feels like I'm far away in another country & whoever is doing the translating has had far too much to drink.
We lay there and looked up at the night sky and she told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls and I told her I'd never heard of them. Of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own.
You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time.
The first time her laughter unfurled its wings in the wind, we knew that the world would never be the same
In my dream the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination. And then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.
There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.
The birds brought seeds & flowers & bits of brightly colored string & placed them in her hair while she slept so she would remember the wild joy of spring when she finally awoke.
I've read a lot of books, so I know bunches of stuff that sounds like it could be true.
If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can & there is nothing more to it than that.
Trying to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but it's a lot harder than it looks because even though they had the same size feet as us, they weren't looking down the whole time while they walked to make sure they were doing it right
