Writing is an act that generates and expands attention. . . Your suffering is not discontinuous from the suffering of the world. Attentiveness, when freed from the intentions of self-promotion, is a practice that inevitably leads to compassion. And compassion initiates the ability to do anything useful, to think anything original and ungrasping, to work with the actualities of a situation with some breadth of being and some hope."

- Jane Hirshfield
from A God In The House: Poets Talk About Faith