“Take a plain-Jane rock and polish it, and you'll find a gem.”
“Polish those gems within brightly, so you may shine...”
“A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.”
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
“Amongst the gray rocks in your head, there’s plenty of room for the colourful gems. Keep digging.”
“Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.”