“Only Certain offered no enticements, for she knew nothing could ease the pain. Not books or photography or food. Not even love.”

“Well, sometimes love seems easy. Like ... it's easy to love rain ... and hawks. And it's easy to love wild plums ... and the moon. But with people, seems like love's a hard thing to know. It gets a...”

“If you're not making someone else's life better, then you're wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.”

“You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!”

“Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.”

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.”