“I find it tiresome when people parade their agonies for public viewing; the last thing I want to evoke is pity. We are all the walking wounded, your pain is no worse than everyone else’s.”

“If there is one thing worse than self-pity, it was other people's pity.”

“We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.”

“Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.”

“Everyone has wounds as want healing. Seems like they all find me.”

“The aloneness. The invisible walls. Always the outsider looking in. Different. Unusual. I despise their world and the superficiality of it all and yet still want to be a part of it. I wonder sometimes how much simpler a life of naïveté and unawareness would be. I have on occasion found people I could trust with who I really am, and when that happens, I walk away....It’s safer that way-- for them, for me. It’s far easier to bear personal pain than the responsibility of someone else’s. I feel safe around people as tough as I am, but they don’t come along that often.”