“The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more tha...”

“Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.”

“My brave husband came back from fighting the Turks and brought me a robe of silk and a necklace of human teeth. He sat up at night by his hearth telling tales of battle. Apparently the Turks are te...”

“I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies.”

“I'd believed mine was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies, the creation of hope. I thought hope could overcome everything, but I was wrong. Hope cannot overcome truth. Hope an...”

“They were just the ordinary sounds of of people beginning their day, silly raucous, discordant, but they were the most beautiful sounds on earth, the sounds of living people.”

“Having friends was weird . . . but in a good way.”

“I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.”

“My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been love...”

“There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defec...”

“One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.”

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true...”

“Nature has always been and always will be, as far as my tiny brain can understand, miraculous. Except, nature won't last because the world won't.”

“Do not pray for easy lives.Pray to be stronger men.Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers.Pray for powers equal to your tasks.Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be t...”

“A miracle is often the willingness to see the common in an uncommon way.”