The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.

Aeschylus writes, In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

We human beings grow through our failures, not our virtues.

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.

Active happiness is not a common state. Active unhappiness is better than dull days. Katherine was seldom in an intermediate stage.

Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

Why is it, she wondered, that things that hurt people make them deeper and more understanding?

Maybe if you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or painful things won't happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us but to the entire universe.

The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn't have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

Use the dirt life throws at you to plant the seeds of your success.