These Precious Days: Essays

Her true work, which had lingered for so many years in her imagination, emerged fully formed, because even if she hadn’t been painting, she saw the world as a painter, not in terms of language and story but of color and shape.

I was starting to understand what she needed might have been color rather than conversation, breath rather than words.

“This one is good for your liver.” “This will help all your internal organs.” “You are beautiful. You are powerful. You decide.” We laughed at the simple optimism but we also caught ourselves listening.

I suspect this is to remind us of the holiness of the ephemeral: we’re always so busy looking towards (for) the eternal.

Influence is a combination of circumstance and luck: what we are shown and what we stumble upon in those brief years when our hearts and minds are fully open.

I would give them the ability both to love and not to care.

MOST OF THE writers and artists I know were made for sheltering in place. The world asks us to engage, and for the most part we can, but given the choice, we’d rather stay home.

I think that this is the major conundrum for me, whether to devote myself to the public good or personal growth. I’m not sure why they seem so separate but they

is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.