“You see only the beautiful things when you stand still. You only see things that you don't ordinarily notice. The birds are the prettiest things, I imagine.”

“Xavier wasn’t put on the earth to witness the bad htings like Jules and I were. He had been put here to notice lovely things, things that God had created and no one had any complaints about. Leaves turning red in the autumn. How when the tide goes out, the shells are left on the shore. I was put here - Jules and I were both put here - to see sadder things. We had to stand in the rain and explain why the world was a lovely place.”

“Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.”

“Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.”

“Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.”

“Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.”

“People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.”