“You understand... just what the Taoists mean when they say that soft is stronger than hard.”

“...for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force." Vesadeva to Siddartha”

“You don't force him, beat him, and give him orders because you know that 'soft' is stronger than 'hard,' that water is stronger than the rocks, that love is stronger than compulsion.”

“Suddenly Yankel was overcome with a fear of dying, stronger than he felt when his parents passed of natural causes, stronger than when his only brother was killed in the flour mill or when his children died, stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive -- to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling -- to be not being, not to be.”

“Maybe it just means that love can be stronger than fear.”

“Somehow I should have been able to say how strong and resilient you were, what a patient and abiding and bonding force, the softness that proved in the long run stronger than what it seemed to yield to...You are at once a lasting presence and an unhealed wound.”