❝ Just because you don’t say much doesn’t mean people don’t notice you. It’s actually the quiet ones who often draw the most attention. There’s this constant whirlwind of motion and sound all around, and then there’s the quiet one, the eye of the storm.

❝ When you’re traveling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

❝ I firmly believe in small gestures: pay for their coffee, hold the door for strangers, over tip, smile or try to be kind even when you don’t feel like it, pay compliments, chase the kid’s runaway ball down the sidewalk and throw it back to him, try to be larger than you are— particularly when it’s difficult. People do notice, people appreciate. I appreciate it when it’s done to (for) me. Small gestures can be an effort, or actually go against our grain (“I’m not a big one for paying compliments…”), but the irony is that almost every time you make them, you feel better about yourself. For a moment life suddenly feels lighter, a bit more Gene Kelly dancing in the rain.

❝ 

The doctor sits me on a table and asks me to stick out my tongue.
I do.

I ask him if he sees the paintings I carry in the back of my throat.
He laughs as if I’m telling a joke,
I’m not.

I’ve got Basquiat, Schiele, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci
so when I laugh, I taste brushstrokes.

I ask him if he can stick out his tongue
so I can see what he has trapped inside of him.

He hesitates a little then he does and I see a man who
struggles for acceptance and chokes on the word
Love.