“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”

“Youre not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.”

“This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?""I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?""Yes," she said."That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch ...”

“In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it'...”

“You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.”

“Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”

“O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a mans mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom,...”

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging...”

“She didn't belong anywhere and she never really belonged to anyone. And everyone else belonged somewhere and to someone. People thought she was too wonderful. But she only wanted to belong to someo...”

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and se...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”