“Every great work of art has two faces: one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.”

“Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.”

“You see, Valentin, there is no such thing as time. It's just a road, a path to travel on. Most of the world is on a train, traveling forward all the time, speeding toward death, with a set schedule and someone else in charge.”

“I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,”

“A Buddhist teacher once said that a poisonous snake is only poisonous when you walk toward it.”

“Storytelling is shaped by two contrary, yet complementary, impulses—one toward brevity, compactness, artful omission; the other toward expansion, amplification, enrichment.”

“Let's see where this leads us, this adventure with the thrum of the music and the blizzard of stagy snow...happy tears freezing to diamonds...let's go, let's go, hurry towards the happy ending....let's go together toward something extraordinary, and I start making plans, thinking we would get that far.”