“...it's the sympathy of strangers that's often the most affecting, the words and gestures of people who have no reason to be kind that touch us the most.”

“We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.”

“It's a strange kind of irony. The things that affect us most are the things we can't remember" (from Swimming Upstream).”

“What is most important almost always involves the people around us. Often we assume that they must know how much we love them. But we should never assume; we should let them know. Wrote William Shakespeare, ‘They do not love that do not show their love.’ We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.”

“Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us.”

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.”