“In some ways, my mother was right; a tree does look the same from the top as it does from the bottom: same branches, starting as weighty limbs and narrowing to the tiniest twigs; same leaves, quivering in the slightest breeze or in the rush of the trains; same colors, same rustling, same gentle sway. But from earth, looking up, a tree is hopeful; it might be touching the sky. From above, looking down, you can see--it's stuck in the dust, just like us.”

“You know what the best part of the stars is?""What's that?""They're the same no matter what sky you're standing under. I mean...yeah, they might move or look like they're in a different place, but they're the same stars.""Yeah? So?""So even if you're apart from someone you want to be with, you can look up at the stars and know they're looking at the same ones.”

“My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.”

“. . . And as fall turned to winter, the Darlington peach trees started dropping their leaves again, gently, like they were letting them go. It wasnt the same as giving them up. It wasnt the same as losing them.”

“We do have a lot in common. The same air, the same Earth, the same sky.Maybe if we started looking at what's the same instead of always looking at what's different,...well, who knows?”

“A bullet from a gun does not make a distinction between practice and combat. You are training to be one and the same way in your life”