“I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny...”

“That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was...”

“Nos-tal-gic, Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for nostalgic. Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Ver...”

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had...”

“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?”

“But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, ...”

“The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved”

“The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.”

“Be still and know you are loved Feel the arms of the universeRocking you to its steady hum.”

“People are like songs to me. About 60 seconds in, I'll know whether or not to add them to my 'favorites.”

“And then this happened. And then this other thing happened. Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you about the time this happened. I should've had this book over for a cup of coffee and a chat.”

“Gods grace invites you to be part of something that is far greater than your boldest and most expansive dream. His grace cuts a hole in your self-built prison and invites you to step into something...”

“The entire area - some 300 square kilometers - is sacred. There are shrines and temples dotted about the slopes, but they merely confirm the sanctity of the land. It is not in the shrines and templ...”

“Above a certain size and level of prosperity, regional cities in Japan look alike. To discover what makes each one different, one has to sample the food and the sake, and stay long enough to see th...”

“Confounding though it seems, to acknowledge our dilemma, that we are no different from any animal coexisting on this planet, ironic really when through the ages, we have struggled with such pretens...”