“But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”

“You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”

“Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.”

“Exhaust your worries and they will soon leave you.”

“Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.”

“Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame.”

“When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...”

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”