“Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.”

“We shall take a star out of the skies and shall set thousands of worlds on fire...”

“Implicitly or explicitly, the rhythms of our lives, the movement from season to season, the patterns of the winds, and the pulse of the tides all depend on the apparent motions of the sun and moon and stars. Yet most modern urban dwellers are only dimly aware of the night sky ― the stars and their myriad forms. They are only slightly more aware of the phases of the moon or the motions of the sun. Even those who take the daily horoscope seriously generally have a very poor notion of its connection with astronomical phenomena.”

“When we gaze at a star in the Milky Way which is 50,000 light-years away from our sun, we are looking back 50,000 years in time.""The idea is much too big for my little head.""The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.”

“The sky is deep, the sky is dark. The light of the stars is o damn stark/When I look up, I fill with fear, if all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead stars and empty space...Well, I see no reason to persevere, no reason to laugh or shed a tear, no reason to sleep and none to wake/ No promises to keep and none to make. And so at night I still raise my eyes tos tudy the clear but mysterious skies that arch avove us, cold as stone. Are you there God? Are we alone?”

“I said, “But I am, Samuel. I am cursed. You’ve seen my mother. You know that is my destiny.” “I know,” he said. “But Magda? Look up at the stars one last time before this night becomes day.” I turned and felt the world below me drift away until the only thing I saw was a vast ocean of night and stars and moon. Samuel’s lips touched my neck, softly. He whispered, “The stars shine so brightly before they die, Magda. And even after they blink away, we can still see them. Stars don’t fade like people do. In ways, they are forever pieces of an infinite sky. We are the same, Magda. You are my star, and I am yours. There might be a piece of our forever that we cannot see, but we must believe it’s there, waiting at the end.”