New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.

Neophyte, n. There are millions upon millions of people who have been through this before-- why is it that no one can give my good advice?

We hold hands as we walk through town. If anybody notices, nobody cares. I know we all like to think of the heart as the center of the body but at this moment, every conscious part of me is in the hand that he holds. It is through that hand, that feeling, that I experience everything else.

Maybe there is hope in the fragments, that what is lost can always be filled in by someone who knows.

I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.

To love--to fall--is not a question. To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.

Do not just seek happiness for yourself. Seek happiness for all. Through kindness. Through mercy.