Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23)

Sometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships. In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give.

For a long time now I have trusted my dreaming self as wiser than that waking self whose head is cluttered with reason and practicalities, so busy trying to control things that he sometimes forgets that the heart has reasons that reason does not know. When I dream, I never forget to trust myself.

We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.

If outrageous imagination is the wine of madness, then come fill my cup.

Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)