“Right words are born in courage, which results from our struggle to make sense of our various predicaments. Cheer is what words are "trying to tell us/... It's native to the words/and what they want us always to know/even when it seems quite impossible to do.”

“The choices we make in our life don't have to define us. It's what we learn from them that's important.”

“Our heads have a nasty habit of ruining what can make us happiest. And there are times in our lives when you have to put aside what we think is best and do with what you feel is best.”

“That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.”

“We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.”

“Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.”

“Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.”