Forests of the Heart

“I think you should wait. The world is large with possibilities for those with patience.”
“But sometimes you have to do something,” Bettina said. “You can’t always just wait for things to come to you.”
“Of course not. That is where the wisdom comes in.”

If all the darkness each of us carries within us, all our angers and unhappiness and bad moments were pulled out of us and given shape, we would all create monsters.

“Trouble is,” Aunt Nancy went on, “is you get into the habit of being who you’re pretending to be. That’s the problem with masks. The reason they’re so seductive is because they’re so easy to put on."

“There’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” the old woman said. “Which is why it’s always better to walk up to any new experience without any preconceptions.”

Every death diminishes us.

“Remember this one small piece of advice,” Abuela would say. “You must always be focused. You must see everything at once, as it is, or you will lose yourself in all the possibilities of what might be, and for you and I, who can so easily slip into la epoca del mito, that could take us a very great distance indeed. It could take us so far we might never return.”

“Little mysteries,” he said. “They’re good for the soul.”
“How so?”
“They keep us guessing.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Well, sure. Mysteries break the patterns we impose upon the world—or maybe let us see them more clearly for a change.”