Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.

Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.

I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.

She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world.

It's like you're born with all these blessings, only you don't realize they're blessings until you lose them. And if you're thick-headed enough, like me, you don't even realize you've lost them, not until they come back to you.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.

The books you love best - those are the immensity of the sea.