“We don't get over losing the dogs who have been a part of our lives. We just get used to living without them.”

“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”

“As we live, our hearts turn colder. Cause pain is what we go through, as we become older. We get insulted by others, lose trust for those others. We get back stabbed by friends. It becomes harder for us to give others a hand. We get our heart broken by people we love, even that we give them all we have. Then we lose family over time. What else could rust the heart more over time? Blackgold.”

“For just this moment, we have the closest thing to an advantage we're likely to get. And if we don't use it, we're gonna lose it." Look at me busting out all the tired old metaphors. Like I'd been saving them all winter just waiting for an opportunity to trot them out.”

“Sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Without them, we'd be unidentifiable. We have to reinvent ourselves every minute.”

“We're meant to stay connected to our hearts, you see. Feeling our feelings, present in the moments we're given. But we don't do that. And that's when we get in trouble. ...We mature and take responsibility for ourselves and others, and that's a good thing. But we're never meant to lose that alive quality, to get cut off from our true hearts. Growing up isn't the same thing as shutting down. ...We can fight it. We have to fight it. Because when our hearts shut down, we become mere shells of who we once were. We don't laugh—not honestly, not from the heart. We don't dream. We don't feel our feelings or use our gifts. We end up trying to just survive instead of live. It's like we've handed our hearts over to the enemy of our souls and said, 'Here you can have it. I'm giving up.”