the book i'm reading right now - a land more kind than home, by wiley cash, a new southern writer - begins with this epigraph, from which the book gets its title.  a beautiful few lines that i hadn't read before:

something has spoken to me in the night…and told me i shall die, i know not where.  saying:
"[death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth."
--thomas wolfe, you can't go home again