“You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be living ins...”

“Anti-sabbatical: A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more person...”

“It had been drilled into us that to feel fear is to not fully trust God. Whoever made that up has never been beneath a cafeteria table with a tiny thread of someone else's blood trickling onto thei...”

“This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the ...”

“People don't have dominion over Nature. it's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die - it's all melted together. De...”

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“Was it all in my head? A Lunar trick?Her stomach twisted. No. She shook her head, fervently. How to explain that she hadnt had the gift before? That she couldnt have used it against him? I would ne...”

“If you can find happiness inside of you, nothing will be able to create angst in your mind.”

“Pain dutifully reminds me that the world is terribly imperfect, but it faithfully helps me appreciate the world on those days when its a little closer to being perfect.”