But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.

The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding.

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?

The place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. it's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light.

...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying.