“To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.”

“Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good...”

“... privilege was obligation; command was service; power, the gift itself, entailed a heavy loss of freedom.”

“Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.”

“It's a queer business, making oneself blind.”

“The earth offers gift after giftlife and the living of it, light and the return of it, the growing things, the roaring things, fire and nightmares, falling water and the wisdom of friends, forgiven...”

“The greatest gift you can ever give another person is your own happiness”

“The greatest gift of life is being wealthy with happiness.”