There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.

It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one's own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.

The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart

Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel.

Well, I was living it, but a shared dream half-lived is a hollow thing

It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

Truly, it is in loss that we learn a thing's true value.