You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness to learn that
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
-David Whyte, House of Belonging