“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”

“In life nowadays it matters to most of us, what we do and how much we have in our lives.... However it should mostly be who we have beside us through our lives, that should really matter.”

“Learning, and especially unlearning, can take place only in the absence of defensiveness.... [W]e can drop our defenses only when we love and are loved.”

“Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.”

“He gains the farthest reaches where the ache of our most ancient absence lay.”

“We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed in feeling sorry for ourselves) behind. If we leave a place and take our selfishness with us, the cycle of problems starts all over again no matter where we go. But if we leave our selfishness behind, no matter where we are, things start to improve.”