Oskar Schell: If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for 8 minutes because thats how long it takes for light to travel to us. For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm. It was a year since my dad died and I could feel my eight minutes with him... were running out.

But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere.

To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

People shouldn't be allowed to get married until it's too late to have kids.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.

And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers.