The richest relationships are often those that don’t fit neatly into the preconceived slots we have made for the archetypes we imagine would populate… - Maria Popova

I've written almost everything on foot and then what I do at the keyboard is transcription.

Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving person, to be a steward of substance. Choose to lift people up, not to lower them down because it is a choice always, and because in doing so you lift yourself up.

"Margaret Fuller wondered whether she was "fitted to be loved" — a word choice both curious and tragic: not "worthy," bespeaking an inherent endowment, but "fitted," as if she could fit herself for love by strain and discipline. With Caroline, with Sam, and now with Waldo, she had pushed and pushed to earn the affection she longed for — a push that eventually repelled each of its objects. But she could hardly have compartmentalized her nature — the very nature by which she had reached the stratospheric heights of her achievement. Those accustomed to hard work and self-propulsion, who have risen to the zenith of accomplishment by force of will and magnitude of effort, are most susceptible to the supreme self-damnation of human life — the belief that love is something to be earned by striving rather than something that comes unbidden like a shepherd's song on a summer evening in the mountains of Bulgaria."