You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.

The universe is too grand and harmonious to believe it's all an accident.

That kind of love - the kind you realize you already have by the life you've created together - that's the kind that lasts.

We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

You can know the whole world and still feel lost in it.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice.