Transformations require that we let go of familiar ways of doing things, without yet knowing what we will do next.

You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. (105)

We are all born into families and cultures we didn't choose, given names we didn't pick, instructed in behaviour and values we might not have freely chosen, and too often we end up expected to live lives designed by others.

Transformations require that we let go of familiar ways of doing things, without yet knowing what we will do next.

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

For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63)

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)