“The cup was emptied and would never be filled again.”

“If the cup is empty, it can be filled.”

“Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.”

“All my life, I've been trying to fill an emptiness inside. But that emptiness...I've built myself around it. Filling it in would be like filling in the empty space within a cathedral.”

“You should never look at the cup or glass as being half empty; see it as being half empty, then you will have mastered the test of greatness.”

“She was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without Alma. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it.”