A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence.

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long.

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

Don't judge me by my books. They're not my voices, and they were never my stories to tell.

No one is exempt from pain.u got all d stuff and no peace or all d peace and no stuff.

Although most advice should be distrusted, particularly when it comes from myself . . . keep an open mind, Miss Hathaway. One should never look a rich husband in the mouth." - St. Vincent

Books cannot always please, however good; Minds are not ever craving for their food.

Reading is a rendezvous with your soul.

Mathematicians use intuition, conjecture and guesswork all the time except when they are in the classroom.

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

Whatever you want to do, go do it.

God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis.