The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

As a kid, you await holidays with a wide-eyed, passionate, almost maniacal enthusiasm. Heavy breathing is involved.

I personally translated the word 'vendetta' as Italian for 'What do you mean, "you want to see other women"?

Fear looks both ways but still refuses to cross; fear looks twice and still doesn't leap. ... Fear usually arrives late, inevitably leaves early, and ends up never going out of town at all. Fear is the phantom hand on the back of the neck and the sound of a door opening downstairs when no one is coming home. ... Fear grows poor because it watches others gain wealth but cannot enter the fray; fear grows sick because it eats away at heath even as it fears its diminishment; fear grows old watching others live in ways that seem to threaten-but in reality only enhance-life.

Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all.

Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice-raised above others-which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

Most cooks would not, for example, prepare an important, elaborate, and difficult dish on the back-burner. Neither should we relegate the cultivation and preparation of happiness for a position where it is both hard to reach and difficult to infuse with new ingredients.