“One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another pe...”

“It was the women of afghanistan,my mother believed,who-once theyd been granted access to books and education- would be the salvation of the country”

“I think it's because it shows that people--or hobbits, as the case may be--can find strength they didn't know they had.”

“That's one of the amazing things great books like this do - they don't just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.”

“The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not th...”

“Of course you could do more - you can always do more, and you should do more - but still, the important things is to do what you can, whenever you can. You just do your best, and that's all you can...”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”

“For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas....”

“It frightens me that I can't do anything sensible about it.""Are you scared that you'll wind up with a boring job where you have to see the same people every day and drink instant coffee?""I'm more...”

“She'd be dead before the memories and pain were finally gone; she knew it, accepted it, and dealt with it.”