“For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly...ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God.”

“You probably know more about life, real life, than most people. You never really know what life is all about until you have suffered and been humbled and beaten down by life. Then it all of a sudden becomes very real. Jesus did not understand what life was going to be like for him, and he was God, until he went off on his own. He also was one of us, a homeless beggar with nowhere to lay his head.”

“Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.”

“I realize the thing about a guy you've spent your whole life loving from afar is that even though he's real you've really made most of him up.”

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

“And I realized again that real life is different from reel life.”