What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to be wrong?

I don't think there's such a thing as an easy life. There's always going to be hard work, and there will always be misfortunes we can't control lurking out at the edges-storms, sickness, wolves. But...

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.

We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason...

Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other...

That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes his...

When you move they can't get you 'A'

Papa stirred in the candlelight, opening his eyes. Oh, Samantha, he murmured, his smile weak. You're as pretty as your mother. She shook her head. Her body was covered with dust, her hair windblown,...

As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.

Life had shown him that logic and step-by-step planning hardly controlled events.

That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws...

We are the people of Misr, the old woman rasped. Since our Sunni ancestors fled from Nilotic al-Ourouba, we have known flight and death. The young go on that our people shall not die.

For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life.

We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.

Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…

She told me that living life as a Prisoner was a waste of life and that freedom, even a second of freedom, was worth more than a lifetime of bondage.

When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos

You cannot say to the sun, or to the rain, To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little...

I don't want to be defined by this.

I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand

She had not planned to weep - it was the last thing from her mind, a display of mawkish weakness - but she could not help it.

Bear gifts if you can't bear anything else.

For how long can one maintain total vigilance? For how long can love last, in isolation, without sinking crushed beneath its own pressure?

Because two propositions can be true at once," he said. "Because the world is imperfect. Because we are imperfect. Because sometimes we're called upon to do terrible things. And because we define...

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.

The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.

There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.