“When you're walking through the darkness, you can't depend on anything or anyone else to light your way. You have to rely on whatever sparks you've got inside you. Or you're going to get lost.”

“You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.”

“You've got to have pride in your home. You are where you're from. Otherwise, you're always going to be lost.”

“Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. That way he can't do anything to you because you're a mile away and you've got his shoes.”

“And let me tell you - carrying sad memories will wear you out. You've got to put them down walk away. Do whatever you must to put emotional space between yourself and your past. That's the only way you're going to make it through.”

“When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever; suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you to go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of the people who are, for reasons which unfortunately you can't be given, simply not allowed. Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the chaos and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air.”