Lessons

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest ... shapes it, renders it, loves it.” – Joan Didion

"The art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood." – Eudora Welty

"You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others — why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion ... but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose." - Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“Stories teach us how to be human. As I understand it, becoming fully human means learning to savor the world, to share in community, to see through the eyes of other people, to take responsibility for our actions, to educate our desires, to dwell knowingly in time and place, to cope with suffering and death. … We need one another. Yet our souls and communities are divided by fear and ignorance and strife. We walk in beauty, yet much of what we do is ugly. We inhabit a magnificent planet, yet we devour our home. Stories are not instruction manuals; they do not teach us in any simple way how to lead our lives. By inviting us to participate in imaginary lives, however, they deepen our understanding and enlarge our sympathies for other people, for other creatures, for the places and purposes that human beings share, and for the earth. That is a good beginning." – Scott Russell Sanders, “The Power of Stories”

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015