Today is the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Ireland.  While I was writing my novel Stone Heart, Brendan Gill told me to reread "Easter, 1916" by Yeats.  I thank him, and Yeats, for that, because the title was inspired by a line in the poem: "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart."

My family is Irish on both sides, and I grew up hearing that family members had fought that day.  (Most Irish people seem to have heard that.)  Maybe it's true.  All I know is that the poem is true, and so is that particular line, not just in the context of Ireland, but in all human suffering.  Peace and love.