“I wonder if pain comes from surrendering or resisting?”

“Bravery is the ability to endure, even unto death, all types of terrible, terrifying and painful situations and we live in a time when people do all that they can to avoid hardship and pain, never ...”

“The empath helps others by absorbing some of their pain, but who helps the empath?”

“Affliction equips the suffering to empathize with others in anguish and not only does it strengthen them, it enables them to be consoling comforters in a world full of hurt.”

“How much pain a person detains may be proportionate to the pain they spare others when they'd rather hurt than hurt another.”

“There is the purity of love, harmonious in every way, but not meant for a lifetime, and then there is the steady love of commitment - no less real but completely different. She had both.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“We are just too blinded by the phrase, "grow old together" and learning its meaning from hopeless movies and novels that glorify undying love and unbelievable understanding. Don't you think? Realit...”

“The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up a...”

“We live to work.Man was made to move.Without work we shall grow old quickly.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”