“Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.”

“An intelligent person can rationalize anything, a wise person doesn't try.”

“When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.”

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.”

“Mr. Troutman ends the class by saying our role is a sacred one. 'We do what others can't,' he says, 'so that others can grieve in the way they need to.”

“Everywhere in Homer's saga of the rage of Achilles and the battles before Troy we are made conscious at one and the same time of war's ugly brutality and what Yeats called its "terrible beauty." The Iliad accepts violence as a permanent factor in human life and accepts it without sentimentality, for it is just as sentimental to pretend that war does not have its monstrous ugliness as it is to deny that it has its own strange and fatal beauty, a power, which can call out in men resources of endurance, courage and self-sacrifice that peacetime, to our sorrow and loss, can rarely command.”

“You can sit around and have a broken heart any old time. Rock stardom happens only once in a lifetime.”