Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order.

It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.

To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.

my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass -- but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.

That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution