“we were particles that came together to form into star after star after star until almost forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life ... This is why for you, anything is possible. Because you are made of everything.”

“The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycled bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter.For example, if you were born to a reigning monarch but kidnapped by the black market baby underground shortly after birth and sent to America where you were raised by common, unremarkable people from Ohio, and when you were in your thirties working as a humble UPS driver, dignitaries landed their helicopter on the roof of your crummy apartment building and informed you of their thirty-plus year search for you, His Royal Highness, the course of your life might change.You know?Our familial genetic origins -medical histories- inform us of medical conditions which exist in our families and when we know about these specific conditions, we can sometimes take certain actions to prevent them.Which is why I think it’s important to consider that billions of years before we were students and mothers and dog trainers and priests, we were particles that would form into star after star after star until forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life; simplistic, crude, miraculous.And after another infinity, there we were.And this is why for you, anything is possible.Because you are made out of everything.”

“Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.”

“I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.”

“I like it when she's shiny, like a star, like a guest on the Donnie and Marie Show.”

“It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all.Death is a head-on collision with your plans.But everything in life--the gold fillings of your teeth, the cotton of your sheets, the air you breathe, all the food you will ever eat--everything there is was born from a collision.Inside every single thing that lives is a debt to a distant star that died.Nothing new is ever created without one thing colliding into another.And something new is created when the person you love dies.Because they are not the only ones who die: you die, too. The person you were when you were with them is gone just as surely as they are.This is what you should know about losing somebody you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.”

“Miracles do happen. You must believe this. No matter what else you believe about life, you must believe in miracles. Because we are all, every one of us, living on a round rock that spins around and around at almost a quarter of a million miles per hour in an unthinkably vast blackness called space. There is nothing else like us for as far as our telescopic eyes can see. In a universe filled with spinning, barren rocks, frozen gas, ice, dust, and radiation, we live on a planet filled with soft, green leaves and salty oceans and honey made from bees, which themselves live within geometrically complex and perfect structures of their own architecture and creation. In our trees are birds whose songs are as complex and nuanced as Beethoven’s greatest sonatas. And despite the wild, endless spinning of our planet and its never-ending orbit around the sun–itself a star on fire–when we pour water into a glass, the water stays in the glass. All of these are miracles.”