“Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.”

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”

“The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.”

“Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting.”

“Life stretches between birth and death. Distance, just a breath”

“Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.”

“I hear my father-in-law's response…"Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"”

“Life confers a value on things -- they do not have any value by themselves -- inasmuch as they are suited to it and satisfy its desires. But this spontaneous evaluation by life is only possible, in turn, if life experiences itself, even through its most humble needs, as what it is and must be, as an absolute value. The fundamental values have no other content than what is implied in life's first experience of itself; they are the proper content of this life.”

“In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.”

“[W]hat alone has value is the use to which life is put and the end to which it is directed. The value of life has to be created by man, it cannot be obtained through luck but only through wisdom. He who is anxiously concerned over losing his life will never enjoy life.”