“She was kahuna, creating more life around her than was actually there, heightening the momentousness of each living thing by simply gazing upon it.”

“Will once said each galaxy has about a hundred billion stars. He said that ninety-eight percent of what exists around us we can't even see. Sometimes I let go and float out there, staring back at earth. I lose track of time. Will told me to forget time, that it was relative. He said light was the thing. At the speed of light, time stands still. It's the wild card. It makes things happen. (The Speed of Light)”

“Recognizing who you are is not the subtext of a life. It's the main point.”

“He thinks of all he has seen and learned: that the universe is indifferent to our human endeavors, that what gives our lives meaning is the passion that invades our hearts and burns in us, and maybe even destroys us.”

“When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.”

“He only knows great teachers can bore into someone else's mind like this -- only they have this kind of power. Maybe that's why teachers are paid so little: what they earn has more power than money.”

“The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go.”