“It is the mess that readers love. The fact that sometimes the people who love us the most aren’t people we’re related to, but people who join our family later. The book acknowledges how difficult family relationship are, and this fuss just proves it.”

“They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end.”

“God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces.”

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.”

“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

“I can’t do anything to death, doctor’s orders.”

“Come windless invaderI am a carnival ofStars, a poem of blood.”

“With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have”

“Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along and asks for it. A person must be prepared to receive wisdom, or else it will do him more harm than good. Moreover, a lout thrashing about in the clear waters of wisdom will dirty those waters for everyone else.”

“Form is what transforms the content of a work into its essence. Do you understand? The character of music arises out of its form like steam from water,’ Yury Andreevich said. ‘With solid understanding of the general laws of form, which encompass all that is amenable to formulation, one can, by groping further, perceive the individual, the particular. Then, subtracting the general, one can sense a residue where wonder lurks in its purest, most undiluted form. Herein lies the goal of theory: the more fully one grasps what is available for comprehension, the more intensely the ineffable shines.”

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

“The truth is that you may mess up a bit. Don’t panic. Relax and remember to give your best and let the chips fall where they may.”

“If you go out without a plan, you will return home without any achievement.”

“Time for us began to be measured by moments when we spoke, and moments when we longed to speak again.”