You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.

You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.

Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.

Do you ever have the feeling you're a tourist on earth?

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture. We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age.

There’s no disaster that can’t become a blessing, and no blessing that can’t become a disaster.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.