“Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside.”

“It was amazing, really, just how much pain the human heart could hold.”

“The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change.”

“Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. “This means so much to me.” Slowly, even though he doesn't realize it, Elijah is giving me so much than he ever could and he's not even spending money. He's using time. Some people think time is a waste. But not to me. Time is a gift. Something to be treasured and never taken for granted. Something that's more precious than any dollar a person could spend. Why? Because you never know how much time a person has left.It can be taken away in an instant.In a heartbeat.And I'm determined to never waste a second of mine.”

“What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody. And yet somehow we live together, mostly in peace, and get things done with a high enough success rate that people keep trying. Human beings get married and a lot of marriages work, and they have children and most of them grow up to be decent people, and they have schools and businesses and factories and farms that have results at some level of acceptability—all without having a clue what’s going on inside anybody’s head. Muddling through, that’s what human beings do.that was the part of being human that Bean hated the most.”