Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.

What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.

The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.

. . . Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.