4 Nations Face-Off Tournament Recap: Canada Wins Championship Game in Overtime

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her. - By Jodi Picoult

I don't understand dating.. and the other things that people do.. all I know is that you ought to find the one you recognize. The one who gives you four arms, four legs, four eyes, and has the other half of your heart. There's only one of those, so what are all the other things for? Like dating? - By C. JoyBell C.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in bewilderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer. - By Jeanette Winterson

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. - By Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones

since feeling is firstwho pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss you;wholly to be a foolwhile Spring is in the worldmy blood approves,and kisses are a far better fatethan wisdomlady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry--the best gesture of my brain is less thanyour eyelids' flutter which sayswe are for eachother: thenlaugh, leaning back in my armsfor life's not a paragraphAnd death i think is no parenthesis - By E.E. Cummings

No matter how much experience you have, there’s always something new you can learn and room for improvement. - By Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart