“Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?”

“If you are in front of a wall that you cannot get past, would you just keep banging your head into the wall?... No, you would find a new wall.”

“You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.”

“My practicality consists in this: in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall … that is my strength, my only strength.”

“By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.”

“If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.”

“Show me your garden, provided
it be your own, and I will tell you what you are
like.”

“You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her…”

“You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.”

“Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.”