I, the Contradiction.

“But longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine. We long for something, or someone. We reach for it, move toward it. The word longing derives from the Old English langian, meaning ‘to grow long,’ and the German langen—to reach, to extend. The word yearning is linguistically associated with hunger and thirst, but also desire. In Hebrew, it comes from the same root as the word for passion. The place you suffer, in other words, is the same place you care profoundly—care enough to act.”

Childhood does not end in one fell swoop, as we wished it would when we were children. It lingers, crouching silently in our adult, then wizened bodies, until one day, many years later, when we think that the heavy burden of bitterness and despair we've been shouldering has turned us irredeemably into adults, it reappears with the force and speed of a lightning bolt, wounding us with its freshness, its innocence, its unerring dose of naivety, but most all with the certainty that this really and truly is the last glimpse we shall have of it.

“Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone, who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.”

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”