“We all have life-defining moments. They are like open-book tests, but we don't know we have been examined until it is over.”

“We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.”

“While life is meant to test, challenge, and strengthen us, if we are attempting to negotiate the twists and turns and ups and downs of mortality alone, we're doing it all wrong. Mortality is a test, but it is an open book test. We have access not only to the divine text but to Him who authored it.”

“Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is.”

“But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.”

“The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.”