Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward. I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

My concept of an advice giver had been a therapist or a know-it-all, and then I realized nobody listens to the know-it-alls. You turn to the people you know, the friend who has been in the thick of it or messed up - and I'm that person for sure.

I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.

My mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn't know where I was going until I got there.It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods.

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.