“Backward I look upon my life,And see one waste of storm and strife,One wrack of sorrows, hopes, and pain,Vanishing to arise again!That life has moved through evening, whereContinual shadows veiled my sphere;From youth's horizon upward rolledTo life's meridian, dark and cold.”

“Looking backward through life, one can see the points of change like great locks through which one glides on a flood wave, so smoothly, on such irresistible power that one is hardly aware of any movement. But life is never the same again. One has gone through the lock and lives on a new level.”

“Life so often becomes a determined, relentless avoidance of pain - of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain has to be acknowledged and even touched so that one can move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.”

“I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.”

“Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”

“Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper “One more time” in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality.”