“What if believing was not about the good in the world? What if people had faith not because of what some superior being could do for them but what they could do when the light of something bigger than any one individual awakened within them--for the sake of others? If evil had been here since the dawn of time, maybe goodness was also here. Maybe, his mistake was thinking it was about him, his own future, his own soul, and not about this: the world needed the good that was in him.”

“The hardest thing you will ever do in life is to know for sure what is true.”

“...in the presence of God, it is less important who is right than what is right.”

“Logically, if you grow up here and you are open minded, you go to college and never come back. If you like it here, which means that you are happy living in the same house, with the same people and ideas as the generation before, then you stay. If you stay, you marry someone just like you. It's like inbreeding.”

“Home meant a sanctuary, as common and taken for granted as the sun rising in the morning.”

“That's what everyone thinks--they think being a cop is about punishing people for doing wrong. But that's not true. You know it isn't. It's about believing in people, believing in the good. In the will of people to do what's right despite their own instincts.”

“Ben remembered reading about curators in "Wonderstruck", and thought about what id meant to curate your own life, as his dad had done here. What would it be like to pick and choose the objects and stories that would go in your own cabinet? How would Ben curate his own life? And then, thinking about his museum box, and his house, and his books, and the secret room, he realized he'd already begun doing it. Maybe, thought Ben, we are all cabinets of wonders.”