“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.”

“It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary.”

“I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-long poverty shows us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.”

“Lo que mucha gente llama amar consiste en elegir una mujer y casarse con ella. La eligen, te lo juro, los he visto. Como si se pudiera elegir en el amor, como si no fuera un rayo que te parte los huesos y te deja estaqueado en la mitad del patio. Vos dirás que la eligen porque-la-aman, yo creo que es al vesre. A Beatriz no se la elige, a Julieta no se la elige. Vos no elegís la lluvia que te va a calar hasta los huesos cuando salís de un concierto.”

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.”

“Fear robs you of your freedom to make the right choice in life that can bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. On the other side of fear, lies freedom. If you want to grow, you need to be brave and take risks. If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing.”

“Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

“I am ready for whatever’s coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Goddamn. The shit hurts sometimes, but I realize what I am, what I have become.”

“They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things-if love can ever be called that.”

“You can get all A’s and still flunk life.”

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lustLike diamonds we are cut with our own dust”

“What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good? This is what I want to do with Violet – give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us.”