“...because it requires the total surrender of my will and finally, ultimately, the wholesale destruction of my ego. That is hard. It I'm going to another world, I cry out, I want to be ME in it.”

“I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light!”

“That's my problem. I'm constantly wary. I can't trust anyone.”

“The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it. The great release of death, I thought, was not from the bondage to our lovely planet- who could ever wish to leave this extraordinary place?- but from one another.”

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and how can I regret what I am - though it often makes me sad.”

“I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry for it,' she said. 'But perhaps that pain will keep you from forgetting me.”

“Self-inflicted pain has a calming effect; it clears the head, diminishes one's fascination with the ego, and most important, gives one the sense of having taken some real action against the everyday foolishness of the body and of the vagrant, willful, heedless imagination.”