This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.

Perhaps I'm just too painstaking a type of person, but I can't grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing.

Don’t you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there’s a huge possibility you’ll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn’t that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don’t you find that scary?

Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself

That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.

There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.