“Selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great loves.”

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

“Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.”

“… But he believed that every great love was in some measure a terrible mistake.”

“Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.”

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”

“People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.”

“We like to tell the lie that when we love someone else, we are doing it for them. We aren't. Love is selfish. It is the most selfish act in the world. It is selfish because it is the most beneficial thing in the world to YOU. Because of this, it should not wait. Do not wait for someone to give you love, for you to love them. Be selfish and love people without reservation. Love makes you whole. Love fulfills you. Love will strike fear from the record of your soul. What a gift to allow yourself to become whole, fulfilled and fearless.”

“As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.”

“.. that terrible feeling that you're not good enough to be loved by the people you love most, and eventually by anyone else.”