One can choose life, or choose death. Having chosen life, I must live it as it is.

In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.

I have long trusted dreams as prophetic visions. I do not mean that they foretell the future, only that they illuminate the present, when my eyes are closed, so that I may see clearly.

All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. (7)

Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.

We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making. We are born into a disordered world, into a family we did not choose, into circumstances we would have had somewhat improved, and we are even called by a name we did not select. (40)

It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)