No matter how smart she appeared, she was fragile at her core.

It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

You can know the whole world and still feel lost in it.

The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.

Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.

As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.

There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.