To Be Able To Create You Have

You Learned In School That You Have Pencils And Paper Only Because The Trees Gave Themselves In Unconditional Sacrifice.

Jephthah Called Together The Men Of Gilead And Fought Against Ephraim. The Gileadites Captured The Fords Of The Jordan Leading To Ephraim, And Whenever A Survivor Of Ephraim Said, 'let Me Cross Over,' The Men Of Gilead Asked Him, 'are You An Ephraimite?' If He Replied, 'no,' They Said, 'all Right, Say Shibboleth.' If He Said, 'sibboleth,' Because He Could Not Pronounce The Word Correctly, They Seized And Killed Him At The Fords Of The Jordan. Fourty-thousand Were Killed At The Time.

Sometimes Family Members Will Ask To Be Kept Out Of Certain Things That I'm Writing, And I Try To Respect That. I'd Much Rather Have Relatives Than A Book.

No, Women Like You Don't Write. They Carve Onion Sculptures And Potato Statues. They Sit In Dark Corners And Braid Their Hair In New Shapes And Twists In Order To Control The Stiffness, The Unruliness, The Rebelliousness.

Life Was Neither Something You Defended By Hiding Nor Surrendered Calmly On Other People's Terms, But Something You Lived Bravely, Out In The Open, And That If You Had To Lose It, You Should Lose It On Your Own Terms.