“You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things”

“I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first. (Riley to her sister Alice about P...”

“Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. O...”

“Healing wasnt always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen af...”

“It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didnt come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you werent ready, when you were just innocently flossing your t...”

“Alice suspected Paul couldnt really picture his father, just like she couldnt picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.”

“Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Tru...”

“The greatest souls have survived deep distress and mental-ill health.”

“Loss of hope is root of distress.”

“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

“The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23”

“Sex for pleasure, for fun, or even for building relationships is completely absent from our national conversation. Yet taking the joy out of sexuality is a surefire way to ensure not that young wom...”