Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.

Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.

Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.