As our sages have said, youth builds a universe with self at the center. - Sheri S. Tepper

"And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are."
I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the tea cup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. "Pain of being as I am? I don't understand."
"But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?"

And here, there, nosing among the grass roots, will come the hounds, muzzles wrinkling, ears dangling, one foot before another in a slow pace to find it, the inevitable it, the nighttime horror, the eater of young.

Every promise is like that, she whispered to herself as she stopped counting strides for a moment. "Every promise has arms and legs and tentacles reaching off into other things and other places, strange bumps and protrusions you don't see when you make the promise. Then you find you've take up some great, lumpy thing you never knew existed until you see it for the first time in the light of morning."