"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break
you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It
is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to risk your
heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens
that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death
brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to
the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their
sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich