“I keep that memory somewhere inside me—where it’s safe. I take it out and look at it when I need to. As if it were a photograph.”

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden where the flowers are dead.”

“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.”

“Kindness begins with understanding we all struggle.”

“It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done.”

“Try a little harder to be a little better.”

“Forgive yourself for the blindness that put you in the path of those who betrayed you. Sometimes a good heart doesn’t see the bad.”

“There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary.”

“Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.”

“That’s the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.”