Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.

I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.

If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice for me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?

He is so kind that he makes me search my soul to find new ways to be compassionate to others.

she had something I could not have, and so I resented her—but I realized the fault was mine and not hers.

Love is a popular romantic notion that leads to nothing but its own brand of misery.

You have not traveled enough," she said. "Or you'd know that every journey makes its own map across your heart.