“There were so many Jacks she had known, and he had known so many Hazels. And maybe she wasn't going to be able to know all the Jacks that there would be. But all the Hazels that ever would be would...”

“She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.”

“Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift und...”

“His words sounded foolish to his own ears. He was not impressive. He was small like the world.”

“What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”

“Don't consider painful what's good for you.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”