The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn't want to get hold of me again. No, thought I, you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

There is no door through which tears do not pass.

One of the themes in my novels is that our crises can turn into blessings. We can feel like our world has crumbled, but ten years down the road when we look back on that time, we can see God's hand at work. I love writing that theme into my books.

There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself.

Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.

I am so thankful I had the strength and promises of a loving God to guide my choices and decisions, and to uphold me through the unbelievably dark days and times of overwhelming sorrow.

Crying can bring such relief.

Alone I had to face the difficult task of changing myself, to stop the everlasting reproaches, which were so oppressive and which reduced me to such terrible despondency.

November 8th, 1943 At night in bed I see myself alone in a dungeon, without Father and Mother. Or I'm roaming the streets, or the Annex is on fire, or they come in the middle of the night to take us away and I crawl under my bed in desperation. I see everything as if it were actually taking place. And to think it might all happen soon! (**good metaphor use later on for English)

Being human can be so dispiriting. It is a real stretch for me a lot of the time.

She did it because she was desperate, and so she listened to her heart. In my experience, there is a lot to be said for desperation—not exactly a bright side, but something expressed in words for which "God" could be considered an acronym: gifts of desperation.