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

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

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

Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?

I do not admire greatness that has no substance.

Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being. No one was shallow. Not really.

But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.