“We are in the hands of those gods, those monsters, those giants: our thoughts.”

“We are all stumbling and falling under our own crosses,those carved from our hands, our sweat,and those not of our own making.”

“On no days of our childhood did we live so fully perhaps as those we thought we had left behind without living them, those that we spent with a favourite book.”

“Has not God chosen those who are pained in this world to inherit his paradise? For it is through suffering we understand our need for his righteous right hand. Indeed, our spiritual needs outweigh our physical ones. Blessed be the name of God.”

“Sometimes the monsters are not monsters, she says. I know. I nod. And sometimes the monsters are within us all, even in those we think are most good.”

“It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.”