“This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.”

Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.

I was happy. I loved the night, I loved t so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn’t sleepy at all.

I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

Her eyes were those of someone who’s just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.

As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.

I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.

Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.

Unfortunately, the simplest things – such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life – are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you.

Education is not solely about earning a great living. It means living a great life.

Being an evil dude: You create this false identity of who you really are and hide behind that as a means to deal with your peers and to hide behind your social awkwardness and inabilities and inadequacies.

Just ’cause there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s not a fire inside.

Adolescence is interesting. I mean, all of life is interesting and all of life is transitionary. But I think there is an exponential growth physically, intellectually, emotionally and there is so much potential.

In Russia there is great interethnic hatred, class hatred – I mean hatred for wealthy people – that is stirred up by official propaganda. That is why there can be no ‘velvet’ solution, as there was, for example, in Georgia or Ukraine.

Meditating means bringing the mind back to something again and again. Thus, we all meditate, but unless we direct it in some way, we meditate on ourselves and on our own problems, reinforcing our self-clinging.

Faith means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.