Words worth keeping

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.

Be thankful for everything that happens in your life; it’s all an experience.

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.

We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.

Sometimes you have to lose all you have to find out who you truly are.

The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.