“If I could forgive, it meant I was a strong good person who could take responsibility for the path I had chosen for myself, and all the consequences that accompanied that choice. And it gave me the...”

“How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away? Fr...”

“Do you have to find the evil in yourself in order to truly recognize it in the world?”

“When you are deep in misery, you reach out to those who can help, people who can understand.”

“Great institutions have leaders who are proud of what they do, and who engage with everyone who makes up those institutions, so each person understands their role. But our jailers are generally gra...”

“We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer.”

“Sometimes walking away has nothing do with weakness, and everything to do with strength. We walk away not because we want others to realize our worth and value, but because we finally realize our own.”

“What a lot of humans fail to see is that they don't need to do anything to be valuable--they already are.”

“Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.”

“God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.”

“No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.”

“Love her but leave her wild.”