“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

‎Tom Stoppard

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made…

Rebecca Solnit

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart, and even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done

— Vincent Van Gogh

 Old Selves

Ok, I no longer want them,

the many selves I had to manage

that exhausted everyone. I believed in

angels then, thought I might be

one — that would be me,

flying off on a tangent, just to land

on someone’s balcony.

But so little could I see from there

I longed for company with wings:

too often I took flight

just to feel the air slap my cheek.

by Ira Sadoff, From Country, Living