Wonder knows that while you cannot look at the light, you cannot look at anything else without it. It is not exhausted by childhood, but finds its key there. It is a journey like a walk through the woods over the usual obstacles and around the common distractions while the voice of direction leads, saying, 'This is the way, walk ye in it.'
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.
Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.
For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.
Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.
The last time I saw Ted Kennedy was a generation after my first meeting, at the Senate subway below the Capitol on Obama's Inauguration Day. He was his usual gregarious and gracious self - with beaming smile and booming voice wishing my husband and me good luck with our pregnancy and expressing his excitement about the new president.
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
I normally don't love green juices, but Body & Eden makes theirs tasty by blending ingredients like avocado and banana with the usual suspects like kale and spinach. Delicious as they are, they're low calorie, and the drink names are catchy: I Have Balance, I Have Energy, and my favorite, I Have Calm.
And I have exposed myself to art so that my work has something beyond just the usual potter.
Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.