“And the shower of roses spun around me, inviting me to take part in their ever-present waltz.”

“And the shower of roses spun around me, inviting me to take part in their ever-present waltz.”

“The only way that your work will truly find an audience is if it is genuine.”

“Inspiration doesn't always come in chronological order.”

“A poem must be authentic. It could be flowery, it could have the most brilliant metaphor, it could be bursting with onomatopoeia and alliteration, assonance and consonance, hyperbole and paradox, from every end, it could have daring syntax and clever cacophony, it could have a neat and ordered rhyme scheme...but, if it loses its authenticity, its ability to convey the very heart and soul of the poet, then all the euphony and cacophony in the world cannot make up for the loss of its identity as a poem. And that is the true cacophony.”

“Maturity is so often considered to be synonymous with ‘adult.’ But I truly feel that maturity may be defined by the ability to be both an adult and a child.”

“Many a year I told her tales. And then the time came for me to watch. And watch I have.”

“I would travel far and wide...seeing, listening, creating. I would weave tales for an enthralled audience. A song would be heard throughout the kingdom, and I would be a part of that. You would normally think that a bard would pick up his tales from stories heard in his travels or, perhaps, from personal observation of these events. Perhaps some bards would create the stories themselves or, at least, adapt the original versions heard... But what if the bard were really more than a bard? What if he were once a gallant knight or an old sea captain...perhaps even a forgotten prince? What if the stories he told, what if the characters brought to life in his stories, were really of his comrades and himself? Stories from long ago that he finally wished to be heard? What if those who listened to his tales, all the while assuming that they were far disconnected from their communicator, were really listening to the narrative of a wanderer intimately connected to it all? And where would such an individual go when his final days as an “official” bard were spent? Perhaps he would decide to retire in a lighthouse. For, surely, no place would be more fitting for the hero emeritus. He would gaze upon the glorious sea in recollection...guiding others with the beacon of light atop his home as he had once been shepherded. The adventurer became the storyteller...and then the Sentinel of the Sea.”

“You were...are...what I heard. Every note.”

“No magnetic wombats, no flying hyenas, no catfish masquerading as samurai, and, MOST CERTAINLY, no Duku jam!”

“The last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who tripped over a glass container of sugar that I had myself dropped... after, of course, having received several bruises from an attempt to retrieve a flip-flop that had somehow ended up in the sink.”

“Or, maybe what really mattered was that game of Crazy 8s.”