“All around us, birds woke up the sky.”

“Somewhere, excitement waited for me like an uncut cake.”

“Anyone who's ever gone from warm and bright to cold and dark knows how I felt.”

“But the wind always swept my words away like cloud shadows, as if it mattered more that I said them, than who heard them.”

“I slept so long and hard that when my mother woke me the next morning I was a stranger to myself.”

“And that's when I felt the first wave of sorrow that came from keeping a new secret.”

“Life only wants us to be happy. We impose these burdens on ourselves.”

“...people with nothing to declare carry the most.”

“Burdens of life become lighter when your heart is filled with love and we learn to forgive and forget with profound kindness.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”