I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

Why do I want to run from happiness?

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.

One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.