“Life is a test.  It was designed to be so.  It is where we taste the bitter and the sweet; where we feel pain and pleasure; where we learn right from wrong; where we pass through both darkness and light.  It is a time to make choices.  And through this process we form our characters—some grand and glorious, some barely decent, and others just plain monstrous. ”

“Moisture falls from the sky, cleansing the world and sustaining precious life. But it's the gloom—the cold, dark air—that receives notice. We fail to see the miracle of raindrops through our own tears.”

“I'm starting to think this world is just a place for us to learn that we need each other more than we want to admit.”

“Why is it we must suffer the loss of something so dear before we realize what a treasure we had?Why must the sun be darkened before we feel how genuinely impossible it is to live without its warmth?Why within the misery of absence does love grow by such bounds?Why must life be this way?It is a strange existence where such suffering makes us far better people.”

“Someone described a writer's world as tormented, and I had to laugh.  A tormented writer?  I personally wouldn't have put those two words together.  Emotions have the power to torment a soul, yes, I agree to that.  But writers, through the formation of our characters, delve so often into the depths of a vast range of emotions that we earn the advantage.  For we've examined every little thrumming, fracture, spark, pang, and darkening of the heart to a point that we understand and appreciate the necessity and strength of emotions as well as the cause and effects manipulating them.  We understand.  We can imagine.  We sympathize.  Our knowledge is power over the torment of emotional ignorance.  I would suggest that those truly tormented are the readers of our works because those poor souls shall never know with such clarity and sentiment all the tiny little details that make our characters breath, move, and live before our very eyes.  Perhaps, if torment does lurk among writers, it comes simply through knowing more about an imagined friend than can ever be adequately expressed in words.”

“Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.”

“For whatever reason, there are people we like and people we don't like. It's hard to say why, and often a difficult opinion to change. Luckily, there's no steadfast rule stating that we must like everyone. But to keep from disliking ourselves, we should develop the good character to treat everyone kindly whether or not we deem them deserving.”