In lovesickness we had found a common language.

The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.

Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.

There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes

The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.

I’d believed I needed to be steady in myself before I could function with others—but surviving alone no longer felt like a good way either.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.

I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it.

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.

I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again.

Youth is a malady of which one becomes cured a little every day.

Recalling and confessing our sin is like taking out the garbage: once is not enough.

The girl with a future avoids a man with a past.

It is right to hate sin, but not to hate the sinner.

A man's life is his work; his work is his life.

Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.

True meditation gives us, as it were, wings for flight to a higher realm and thus detaches us from terrestrial fetters.