The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. Some people unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. Nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone. Nothing will work unless you do. Of all the needs a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God. One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence--neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish--it is an imponderably valuable gift. | 
