Freedom

"Let your greatest possession be the ability to let go of any possession, joyfully."

"You're absolved," I tell him. He brings his eyes back up to mine. There's no fucking way he knows what that word means. That's a word I dream someone will say to me. So I put it in his language. "You're free."

"Free is he who is reputable for not being fearful of losing his reputation."

"None of us will truly have freedom until we know what it means to lose everything" - Laney"

"Though there is much we still want, there is much we already have, and that means we have much to lose as well. It’s that potential loss that can keep us bound so tightly that we never reach our biggest dreams, because the biggest dreams require the most risk."

"He would say things like, “But you are my wife!” when I didn’t do something that he wanted me to do. His expectations were not realistic."

"Being married definitely took work. When we fought, I felt like I wanted to float away and drown, whereas before I knew I could walk away without any strings attached."

"I never thought that freedom would feel so much like grief."

"How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends."

"It's not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you."

"The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird."

"Forgiveness of sins is great, but I'd rather have the ability to quit doing the things I keep needing forgiveness for."

"Forgiveness is a process that we have to learn to act upon daily. Anger is weakened by forgiveness. When you forgive, you free yourself from carrying around the torment that the offense has caused you."

"Forgiveness is the process of dropping off your emotional baggage."

"When you forgive yourself, you free yourself from memories which aren’t serving you anymore."

"When you forgive somebody, it’s not so much for them as it is for you. You need to be free from that. And you need to rise above that."

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you."

"In the closing of this chapter, Lutzer describes the choice of forgiveness in more detail: 'Without both honesty andforgiveness, there can be no freedom from the fits of rage.'What happens through the years when such anger is left unattended or is unresolved (or forgiveness is not pursued)? Without forgiveness, does the anger dissipate or possibly fade away? I don’t think so; but instead, anger continues in one’s life and is carried into their adulthood. What kind or level of control can manifest (or grow) in this unresolved anger; and as for the person or carrier, what can be expected of their heart and soul?"

"When you forgive, you free your soul. But when you say I'm sorry, you free two souls."

"Self-hatred is self-imprisonment. Self-forgiveness is self-liberation. You have the right to suppress yourself, oppress yourself and depress yourself. You have the right to impress yourself too. Feel happy!"