You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.

But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]