If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don't yet know the world for what it is.

In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning.

Then the clarifying thing happens, and what you need to do, what you must do, is not a question, not demand more revelation than what is given, be quiet in the face of it, quiet and grateful that it has been given to you to see this, to be for even a short time aware of the extraordinary layered depths and profound beauty of the world to which we mostly blind ourselves.

It's funny, ma'am, how sometimes you're so sarcastic but it doesn't sting.""Because of my dimples. Dimples are a get-out-of-jail-free card

Free will," she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.

You do what you have to do. That's who you seem to be to me, anyway. You're one who does what he has to do.

Even the wisest and the best of us can be foolish occasionally.

I'm not much for parties. Sometimes you have to wear a funny hat, sometimes they expect you to eat sushi, which is like eating bait. And there's always some totally drunk girl who thinks you're smitten by her, when what you're really wondering is if she'll vomit on your shirt or instead on your shoes.