“You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this:“Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”

“Life is the way it is. It’s worth what it’s worth! It does its best, within its limitations. We mustn’t ask too much of life, either. Nor should we want to suppress it!”

“You mustn’t blame yourself for the way the boy’s turned out, Vernon. If there’s something rotten on the inside, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“‎Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.”

“Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.”

“Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart.”