If you have to convince someone to stay with you, then they have already left.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others and judging their lives as either black or white, good or bad. We all live our lives in shades of gray.

—Shannon L. Alder

No one can change a person, but a person can be the reason someone changes.

—Shannon L. Alder

Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.

—Shannon L. Alder

People have set moral standards for me my entire life, yet they have always left off the ones that they couldn't keep.

—Shannon L. Alder

I lived in the midst of an affectionate, charming family, and I am sure that there is no greater obstacle to a person who is just beginning to write.

—Katharine Butler Hathaway

Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection.… Money is simply the bandage which wounded people put over their wounds.

—Margaret Halsey

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.

—Eric Hoffer

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.

—W. Somerset Maugham

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

—Oscar Wilde