A few years ago, I stayed up all night and watched a man stand outside of a closed high school. He hadn’t slept for at least 24 hours and was subjecting himself to heavy rains and winds blowing at over 120 miles per hour. I was sharing this night with him, me parked safely in my bed over 1,500 miles away, because I was terrified that Hurricane Rita was going to flatten my childhood home, the home built by my father…

Anger at your faults is arrogance, and of a very self-destructive form. Every failure becomes pain, every pain becomes a gruesome punishment.

Death’s a funny thing. I experienced my first funeral, and thus saw my first dead body, when I was very young. I recall at least four funerals before I was a teenager: some family friends and a great aunt. I didn’t experience my first truly personal death until I was 18 when my cousin and best friend died in a single-car accident…