Those that yield are not always weak

I preferred a hard truth to a well-meant lie.

Only insofar as you enjoy being sorry, my dear, which, while it is a considerable amount, occurs only after the fact, thus making it a singularly ineffective deterrent, yes?

Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight.

There are those who hold that there is a pattern to all that is said and done in this world, that no thing happens without reason nor out of time. As to that, I cannot speak, for I have seen too many threads cut short to believe it, but of a surety, I have seen too the weft of my fate shuttled on the loom. If there is a pattern, I do not think there is anyone among us who can stand at a great enough distance to discern it; yet I will not say that it is not so.

Love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.

This is the secret that none dares tell who fights for a cause. Dying, we are all alike.