Bill Clegg

Some trees love an ax, a drunk old-timer mumbled one night at the Tap, back when she still went there, and something in what he said rang true, but when she later remembered what he'd said, she disagreed and though instead that the tree gets used to the ax, which has nothing to do with love. It settles into being chipped away at, bit by bit, blade by blade, until it doesn't feel anything anymore, and then, because nothing else can happen, what's left crumbles to dust.

I knew I didn__ want to be alone anymore.

I__e never been one to go to church, but I__e al was ways believed in a creative intelligence behind the ongoing riddle of the world.

[W]e__e learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.

There are no words precise enough to describe how wide and empty the world is when you lose someone that matters to you as much as Penny did to me.

Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to help him clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why. It is, as Ben would say about most of what I used to worry about, none of my business.

I've been interested in the idea of forgiveness and the necessity of it. I think of it as the most critical piece of any relationship, whether that be business, or romantic, or familial. We fail each other. We make mistakes. If we contract to go on after those mistakes, forgiveness is involved. Forgiveness is required.

We only learn at the speed of pain, and we don't have others in our lives without forgiveness.

Navigating a nonsober world of restaurants and bars, dinner parties, and benefits is like anything that requires practice. Like tennis or a foreign language, it gets easier the more you do it. But like all beginnings, it can be awkward. You stumble, you worry, and then there are unexpected moments of grace that give you the courage to keep going.

The world__ magic sneaks up on you in secret, settles next to you when you have your head turned.

[A]s a parent you just have no idea what anything means. On some level everything your kids do and say is in code.