“Suffering has always been with us; does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives.”

Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won’t work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae.

I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

I don’t think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

If one burdens the future with one’s worries, it cannot grow organically. I am filled with confidence, not that I shall succeed in worldly things, but that even when things go badly for me I shall still find life good and worth living.

I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream…and life continues.

It is the only thing we can do. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it sill more inhospitable

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

The fact is I don’t lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.

Such words as ‘God’ and ‘Death’ and ‘Suffering’ and ‘Eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

After each creative act one has to be sustained by one’s strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don’t know what, lest one tumble.

I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.

That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.

What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.

We’re discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day.

Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

Figure skating is not a hobby. Its my work, which I want to do, and do well.

Eve is a life giver; she is Adam’s ally. It is to both of them that the charter for adventure is given. It will take both of them to sustain life. And they will both need to fight together.

What use would wings be to a man bound in iron fetters?

Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.

Do not fight against Providence; nor bring more heavy weather to the storm. Face what is already there.