“No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.”

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls”

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”

“As long as we speak only in response to other people's disapproving silence, and as long as our words are but an apology, we ourselves are unable to judge the world fairly. Our life is an enigma to others, but their lives are an enigma to us, and our attempts to communicate with them are futile: we see them always as an audience, and in their eyes we are actors. No mind or character can withstand such false relations. They affect not only our behaviour but also our most intimate feelings.”

“There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley’s Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime.”

“What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.”