“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”

“Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.”

“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”

“We can't change the world by shouting, but our words can have meaning if we give them enough respect.”

“There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.”

“When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.”

“Love, in the universal sense, is unconditional acceptance. In the individual sense, the one-on-one sense, try this: we can say we love each other if my life is better because you're in it and your life is better because I'm in it. The intensity of the love is weighted by how much better.”

“They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”