“Who are you? Whats your name?Mi Mi.Do you hear that thumping noise?No.It must be here somewhere. Tin Win knelt down. Now it was nearly next to his ear. I hear it more and more distinctly. A soft pu...”

“Yet she also longed for moments when she might be weak, when she need not prove anything to anyone.”

“We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. W...”

“She saw that he knew what loneliness was, that he understood why it might be raining inside a person even when the sun shone, that sadness needed no immediate cause.”

“Only a few days earlier he had explained to her that he did not merely read books but traveled with them, that they took him to other countries and unfamiliar continents, and that with their help h...”

“How can anyone truthfully claim to love someone when theyre not prepared to share everything with that person, including their past?”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: "The girl went through the experience that...”

“The hoopoe said: 'Your heart's congealed like ice;When will you free yourself from cowardice?Since you have such a short time to live here,What difference does it make? What should you fear?The wor...”

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”

“Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.”

“She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those ...”

“We may be just a drop in the ocean, but even the ocean envies the depth of our love.”