“Our bloodlines (family) have a hard time appreciating our good work and congratulate us for it... But it's so easy for them to hurt you by small flaws on your work.”

“Nothing worth while comes easy. Hard work just makes you appreciate it more.”

“As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it's just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn't work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.”

“We work so hard to avoid death because life is precious. That is why we clutch to this life so tightly. That's why we have so much anxiety, even anger, when something threatens us or our loved ones. But here's the contradiction: If you work TOO HARD to avoid death, then you're not going to have time to feel how precious life really is. You won't be able to feel it. You'll know it in your head but not in your heart.”

“The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”

“It's hard to forget hurtful things, isn't it? Children with autism have good memories. So it's much harder for them to forget bad experiences than it is for us. So fill them with as many good experiences as possible.”