God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.

A jealous husband is an ugly thing.

Human empathy, while not found on any chart of human anatomy, is the reason we instinctively hurt for our children... it is the reason that one human being's intensely personal tests and triumphs can be harnessed to the good of countless others.

What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?

There's no original evil left in the world. Everyone's just recycling pain. (257)

...the horrific fact that our lives and those of the people we love are impermanent and exquisitely fragile, that any of us can cease to exist without warning, that loving anyone, anywhere, at any time, leaves you infinitely vulnerable at every single moment. (20)