“I know the answer to the question now, by the way: why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It came from my inner editor, the part of me that forces the wordy writer in me to dump ninety percent of all modifiers: Ask both questions again, minus the adjectives."Why do things happen to people?"Just because.”

“It's a scary thing; moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening.”

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

“Why do bad things happen to good people?To balance out the good things that happen to bad people.”

“So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” “Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.” “What’s that?” “The truth.”

“Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”

“Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, because if it was the other way around good people would become bad and bad people would become good.”