It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run … - Cheryl Strayed

...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

"I've given you everything," she insisted again and again in her last days. "Yes," I agreed. She had, it was true. She did. She did. She'd come at us with maximum maternal velocity. She hadn't held back a thing, not a single lick of her love.

"A proclamation of love is not inherently "loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken." The terms you agree to in any given relationship are connected to, but not defined by, whether you've said "I love you" or not. [...] The point is, Johnny, you get to say. You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings..."