“Courage doesn't mean never being afraid. We're all afraid sometimes. Bravery means doing the right thing anyway. That's true strength.”

“Loss was the hesitation in his voice when he spoke his mother tongue, the myths he did not know, a childhood that felt so vast and alien from his parents' that he did not know how to cross it.”

“In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents!”

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.... Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.”

“Find a part of yourself hidden in the twilight.”

“Perhaps you can explain it to me, then,” she said, “how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he’s a man and I’m a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker’s shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day?”

“Easter Contemplations It does not concern me If this life is all I have. I do not need a resurrection Or reincarnation Or to live with the gods. It is enough to live With you here In the days of your presence. When my breathes Are complete, Lay me by your side In the dust. As in life, so in death. Let us become one With each other again.”

“What is courage without fear?”