Book excerpt: We Heard the Bird Sing is a collection of anecdotes, personal testimonies, recollections, conversations, and other firsthand accounts of interaction with famed spiritual leader Anthony de Mello, S.J. Even after his death in 1987, Anthony de Mello, known affectionately as "Tony", continues to offer guidance and teaching. Here, seventy-two short pieces reveal de Mello helping, challenging, and changing people's lives. Examples of de Mello's counseling, spiritual direction, therapy, theoretical expositions, repartee, parables, and insightful jokes fill the pages of We Heard the Bird Sing. The final section of the book presents excerpts from letters and papers that shed light on de Mello - a man whom reviewers often described as "mysterious to the last".