“Rocks in my path? I keep them all. With them I shall build my castle.”
“Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom.”
“Whenever you are going through life’s challenges, remember that for iron to be cast into its desired form, it must first go through intense heat.”
“The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.”
“I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being—one of many ways—and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”
“Even though our time in this life is temporary, if we live well enough, our legacy will last forever.”
“One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.”
“Whatever we’re wrestling with personally comes out in our work.”
“Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather the learned sympathy towards the pain of others.”
“One of the advantages to getting older, though: while you might not change all that much, you at least got to know yourself. The real you, minus the bullshit and wishful thinking.”
“Her Kind I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.”
“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
“Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head, It will get easier, your dreams are not dead.”
“Sometimes it is good to be in uncomfortable situations because it is in finding our way out of such difficulties that we learn valuable lessons.”
“A diamond doesn t start out polished and shining. It once was nothing special, but with enough pressure and time, becomes spectacular. I m that diamond.”
“Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we re afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we ve always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.”
“Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want--you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don t know. I ve forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn t matter, so long as you move.”