If you're at all a fan of his fiction, you'll find familiar themes also woven into these speeches. They are beautiful, humble, and human. I pull this little book out and offer up quotes from these speeches to friends all the time - it's like giving advice from wise uncle Kurt.

She studied with her hair pinned up and her school tie slung. She didn‘t really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn‘t fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making.

Just how graceful, you may wonder, can a careening fat girl be? You fail to consider, for such is the tyranny of fashion, that the swan is not a slim animal; that the sea lion has no waist. You forget the patient, timeless arch of the surfacing whale.