“What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object?”

“The most colorful thing in the world is black and white, it contains all colors and at the same time excludes all.”

“Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don't fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight.”

“The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”

“TRUE LOVE MAKES US HAPPY. If love doesn’t make us happy, it’s not love; it’s something else. Love is a wonderful thing. It gives us the ability to offer joy and happiness, relieve suffering, and transcend all kinds of separation and barriers.”

“Once lucky, twice confident, and thrice dead.”

“Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.”

“A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.”