“Tragedy cannot be the end of our lives. We cannot allow it to control and defeat us.”

“If a man feared defeat, he would never give battle... Every victory is inevitably succeeded by defeat. It is the nature of our lives. A man might fight a thousand battles and emerge triumphant from every one; still, he will suffer defeat in the end, for we die and we are forgotten. If we cannot face defeat, we must live always, throughout our lives, in fear. For it awaits us all.”

“Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.”

“Life is about choices; it's not about excuses. Excuses only trap us into believing that we cannot take control of our own lives.”

“The passions we cannot control are the ones that define us.”

“But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail”