To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread.

Strange, how being left out of a secret always feels like a betrayal of trust.

His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief... Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss.

...You won't even see what is put right on the table before you. Men. If it was raining soup you'd be out there with a fork.

...some secrets beg to be betrayed. The secret of undeclared love is like that.

Still I promise myself, "Next time I will do better" in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered a "next time.

There are few things so tender as a man's dignity.

In any case, it is not love, but friendship, that truly eludes you.

Thing in Everything

You can only go forward by making mistakes.

All music has political dimensions because it suggests a way of being.

Playing to bigger audiences at festivals got me in the mindset of writing music that I would sing to a crowd.

You never lose a game if the opponent doesn't score.

I care about people. In the end, I think they feel it. It comes across, regardless of the character I'm portraying.

What does this world need: gifted men and women, outwardly empowered? Or individuals who are broken, inwardly transformed?

A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.