Dear Heart, before you suffuse the world with your pained longing remember that your memories of Adrienne's beauty are as close as anyone will get to in possessing that essential substance, which is also mistaken for Adrienne.

"As we get older, events of even a small scale take on larger significance. The heart becomes less malleable, as hope, that strange fire, drains from it. And then as apathy sets in, enthusiasm to stroke the dying embers back to flame wanes. Perhaps this is how cynicism, disguised as experience, is born."

"The lager question for you is this: what is the end point of, i.e., the meaning in, all human experience?"

"That we have been given a gift to see and feel this world, and irrespective of the suffering that must be endured, this is enough. The rest is always summed up the easeful sleep of death"

"Another question: Is passionate love worth the volcanic disruption of all the lovely little cities of friendship and desire? The writer didn’t admit to being the lover or a rejected resident of the little destroyed cities, but probably thought the formal, maybe arcane style would assure an answer." ~ Grace Paley

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