The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.

To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have some kind of guiding principle. A belief of some kind

Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.

...let the emotional weight of a scene rest on the dialogue wherever possible. This is the easy way to avoid overinterpretation, which seems to be what turns a scene from sympathetic to sentimental.

Autonomy is the whole thing; it's what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.

I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.