"How’s this poem for its ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of fifteen short lines?"

Me — a teenager?
If she suddenly stood here now, before me,
would I need to treat her as near and dear,
although she’s strange to me, and distant?
Shed a tear, kiss her forehead
for the simple reason
we share a birthdate?

~ Wisława Szymborska

"We are not at home in the world because we imagine it is as we have become, full of nothing but yearning and forgetting and hoping for something so raw we can't describe it."

~ Simon Van Booy

A son and his father, I knew
from their looks, the son with his
right hand on the handrail,
the father, left hand on the left,
and in the middle they were
holding hands

~ Ted Kooser

"Dad has had a series of loses that you just don't get over. He lost Mom. He lost his sight. He can't walk. His hearing is going. He's afraid his mind is almost gone...I was so happy Dad had something wonderful this morning."

~ Stephen Tobolowsky

"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."

~ Wendell Berry

"Our voices echo in the spray
and steam of this room where once,
long ago, he knelt at the tub’s edge
to pour cups of bathwater over my head."

~ Amy Fleury 

How many science classes
are required to convince a believer
the sun never rises or sets,
that thunderstorms don't have personalities? 

“Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.”

~ Mary Oliver

"There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready." 

~ Maurice Sendak