# Leben

"We live in deeds not years In thoughts not breaths In feelings not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best."

"I sing to use the waiting, My bonnet but to tie, And shut the door unto my house; No more to do have I, Till, his best step approaching, We journey to the day, And tell each other how we sang To keep the dark away."

"I walked to the door where Clovis waited. When I looked up, he was staring at Adam. A quick glance backward confirmed Adam was returning his stare. Freaking males, I thought, they couldn’t be more obvious about their territorial dispute if they’d both peed on me."

"I saw a bullfrog snap a tiny bird off a reed once, swallowing it just like that, grinding the singing thing to foodstuff in its slimy belly, and the witnessing of that act produced in me an insight: that this moment of terror before resignation was possibly the only ascertainable moment of truth we can ever know in life."

"The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can't reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward. You have to stop worrying about who's not here and start worrying about who is."

"My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death now I see it from my son's perspective."