“Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.”

“I want you to understand how people see you, and how your actions matter...You must learn that your place in the world is important. You've been given the power to affect people, just as we all have, and it's important -- no, vital -- that you do the right thing with it.”

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

“Second, and far more important: tuck your chin. You're going to get hurt, so expect it and be ready. You may as well see it coming.”

“There comes a time in our lives when what we know becomes less important than what we love. And that what we love, when all is said and done, might be the most important of all things.”

“He reflected that what is important is not things, but the meaning we give to things. Sooner or later death comes for everyone. More important than putting off death, is giving it a meaning.”