How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.

I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental.

Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal.

...at it's best fiction is medicine.

Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.

Night has patterns that can be read less by the living than by the dead.

Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.