“I know what love is and it is friendship, set afire. Love is easy. Love is chemistry—a science lab. Love is as simple as connecting this together with that. Her brilliant eyes and my heated heart. But this is not love. Not yet. Genuine love is friendship. Genuine love resides only in the present moment. Genuine love is everyday. Genuine love feels no need to entertain the space away. Genuine love is up, genuine love is down and yet genuine love never wavers. Love is something else entire: it is caring. It is arguing, but with curiosity—it is giving an inch when the other is certainly wrong—it is teasing, it is empathy, it is respect, it is admiration each morning.”

“Striking a snake with a short stake is a mistake. Instead, take a long rake and break its head, if it quakes or shakes, strike again and again till it can’t wake to make trouble.”

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”

“What we experience as children becomes familiar and we are more likely to replicate experiences and attract people who carry similar patterns as our primary care givers.”

“It is strange, I thought, how we always recognize our best memories in hindsight.”

“I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.”

“You are more than just flesh and bones; you are unlimited energy and power.”

“A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.”