“Life is short. Everyone's forever planning for the future. No one lives in the moment anymore.”

“I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined are the best opportunity we get to live fully, to be our strongest, our most compassionate, our most graceful selves. ”

“The Universe has a plan to make sure we don't ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts.”

“His name was Zeke, short for Ezekiel. She asked him if he was religious, he said only about certain things.”

“The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up.”

“For a long time I thought the object of the game was identifying the question, love versus freedom, Mandela vs Buthelezi, leave or stay forever ghosted under a thick curtain of oil. Nora said, Maybe a choice isn't the right way to think of it, by which she might have meant, A question loses its power when there is only one answer, as in, yes to Bhutan and Barstow. Yes to chanterelles and portobellos. A temple. Yes. A mosque. Yes. The changeable heart of a child.”

“what if you could have all the wisdom of a lifetime and still look like you looked when you were twenty-five''or what?' I say.'what, what' she says.I say, 'I thought we were playing Would You Rather...?'She twists her head like a dog at a foghorn. 'Marla,' I say, 'you get the wisdom because you don't anymore look like you did when you were twenty-five.'She says, 'You don't understand the rules to this game.”