When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

• Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.
• Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.
• If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.
• Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.
• Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.
• Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter.
• The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you're only as well as you are.
• I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.
• Some people seem to understand this - that life and change take time - but I am not one of those people.
• The earth is rocky and full of roots it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.