The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart's deep need for instruction.

Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.