et al.

Love makes us beautiful. Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There’s no need to ponder the question. There is no such person.

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.

Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.

Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?

Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.

Hope was the wind that came from nowhere to fill your sails and carry you home.

Most of us can hide our greatest hurts and longings. It’s how we survive each day. We pretend the pain isn’t there, that we are made of scars instead of wounds.

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.

She had learned over the years that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.