Opal

“Guariglia went to his children, who were playing by the brazier. "Look at them," he said. "I know they may not be as beautiful to you as they are to me..."
"They are," Alessandro interrupted.
"No," Guariglia insisted, "they're not beautiful in that way, but to me, Alessandro, they are all that is good and holy. I didn't know God until I saw them. It's funny, as soon as you lose faith, you have children, and life reawakens.”
― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

“Jackson,”
― Founding Fathers, The United States Constitution

“Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season