Chances Are...

I didn’t know what to say in a world where people were hated and attacked for not being the right color, not speaking the right language, not worshipping the right god or not loving the right people; a world where hatred was the common language, and bricks, the only words.

I don't know this song. They haven't taught me it to us at school." " When in doubt, just do what I do, Robs. Hum if you don't know the words

We are each alone in the bubble of our grief, and while it's true that misery loves company, sorrow is not reduced or diminished in any way when it's shared.

I do not think it is brave to pick up a gun or to carry a bomb, but it is brave to open yourself up to the potential for loss and disappointment when you have already felt too much of its sting.

What you can’t afford to lose is precisely what the world robs you of. How it knew what you needed the most, just so it could deny you that very thing, was a question for philosophers. Answer it and you’d have the kind of book Tom Ford would’ve considered worth writing: urgent and new and absolutely necessary. To write it, though, you’d have to be on fire.

Some good-byes are as gentle and inevitable as sunset, while some blindside you like a collision you didn't see coming. Some good-byes are schoolyard bullies you are powerless to stop, while others punctuate the end of a relationship because you decided: enough. Some are heartbreaking, leaving you a little more damaged than you were before, others set you free.

My favorite teacher in college advised me not to write a book until it was impossible not to.

… yank out one thread from the fabric of human destiny, and everything unravels.

Maybe this was the unstated purpose of education, to get young people to see the world through the tired eyes of age: disappointment and exhaustion and defeat masquerading as wisdom.

Only after I had learned those boundaries and generalities of my grief was I able to venture further into the mountains and valleys, the peaks and troughs of my despair. And as I traversed them-breathing a sigh of relief thinking that I'd conquered the worst of it-only then would I finally arrive at the truth about loss, the part no one ever warns you about: that grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life, walking its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home.

Fear is what makes us human and it is in overcoming fear that we show our strength.

The only thing a warrior cannot fight is her own fierce nature.

For years now he’d believed he had no further urgent business with this world, or it with him. But it could be he was wrong.

he’d have to improve significantly to achieve mediocrity.

I didn't know what to say in a world where people were hated and attacked for not being the right color, not speaking the right language, not worshipping the right god or not loving the right people; a world where hatred was the common language and bricks, the only words.

Because yank out one thread from the fabric of human destiny, and everything unravels. Though it could also be said that things have a tendency to unravel regardless.

Lincoln chuckled yet again. “What’s that poem you’re always quoting? About parents?” Teddy nodded. “Larkin.

I do not doubt that you are a good woman, but the very fact that you are so righteous might be the reason Nomsa could not be honest with you. Sinners have more forgiving ears than saints.

You can do things his way, or you can wish you had.

Intellectual curiosity, moreover, was not the same as talent, and he gradually came to understand that his own particular aptitude was for fixing things. From an early age he’d possessed an intuitive grasp of how and why things went off the rails, as well as how to get them back on again. He enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together.

Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Christian, Jew, Englishman, Afrikaner, adult, child, man, woman: we were all there together, but somehow that eclectic jumble of labels was overwritten by the one classification that applied to every person there: “friend.

Almost everyone who mattered most to me was in the same room...Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Christian, Jew, Englishman, Afrikaner, adult, child, man, woman; we were all there together; but somehow that eclectic jumble of labels was overwritten by the one classification that applied to every person there: "friend".

Here in my homeland, I am always barefoot.

am learning how love wells up and causes great pain when it has nowhere to go.

During those early days, I could merely circle around it, tracing its contours as I tried to familiarize myself with its heft. I learned that just as a map of the world only contains rough outlines of countries—their borders and major cities, as well as the rivers and oceans that dissect and separate them—so too would the cartography of my loss at first be laid out as a broad, abstract concept for me to come to terms with. Only after I had learned those boundaries and generalities of my grief was I able to venture further into the mountains and valleys, the peaks and troughs of my despair. And as I traversed them—breathing a sigh of relief thinking that I’d conquered the worst of it—only then would I finally arrive at the truth about loss, the part that no one ever warns you about: that grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life, walking its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home.