“Youth is a gift that goes largely unappreciated by its proprietor. Like a single raindrop falling on hot pavement it evaporates before your eyes and transcends into adulthood. The innocence and energy become merely a file in one’s repository of memories… there its value is priceless and nonrenewable.” RW”

“Adversity and hardship are the building stones of character. How can you appreciate good times and savor happiness if you have never dealt with ill fortune, discomfort and sorrow. It’s like a child learning the difference between hot and cold. RW”

“There is a big difference between being a good person and having good intentions. Having good intentions is a fleeting thought. Being a good person is a full time job. RW”

“A “good friend” was well…. Like your teeth.You had a limited number of them to last you an entire lifetime.You could survive without them, but having them made life much more enjoyable.If you didn’t take good care of them, you could lose them forever.”

“MemoriesMemories are real life experiences distilled over time into a palatable elixir that one can selectively choose to indulge.Heartbreak and misfortune are most often entombed in cerebral mausoleums. Due to their caustic essence they are prohibitive to access and are accompanied by a lingering bitter aftertaste. Pleasant recollections may be retrieved at will as if tethered to the end of a string on a reel. They are often seasoned to taste and bursting with flavor and pungent aromas.”

“If you are fortunate enough to be part of a hit, particularly a transcendent one, all emotional ownership is transferred from you to the audience. They judge it and embrace it; project their own hopes, dreams, and fears onto it; take their personal meaning from its themes, and with these investments it becomes theirs. The significance of your participation pales in comparison to the significance the project has on their imaginations.”

“If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one’s choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it has the duress of a recoil.” With literary belief, however, “one is always free to choose not to believe.” This, Wood argues, is the freedom of literature; it is what constitutes its “reality.”