“If Americans thought music and art belonged together, they wouldn't have the Grammys.”

“No drug is a cure, though. Drugs are just big pieces of tape they stick over warning lights.”

“Seeing with your heart, speaking from your heart, wearing your heart on your sleeve, and sacrificing for your heart will transform you into an extravagant lover. Hard work? Absolutely. But when you're an old woman at the end of your life and you evaluate your time on earth, I believe that there is only one question- beyond that of your salvation- that will really matter: Did I love well?”

“When we fail, we cut the string. Then God ties it up again, making a knot and thereby bringing us a little closer to Him. Again and again our failures cut the string, and with each additional knot God keeps drawing us closer and closer.”

“Fire sat unbreathing. A life that was an apology for the life of his father: It was a notion she could understand, beyond words and thought. She understood it the way she understood music.”

“If I shot an arrow and thought about an ass, would it surprise you that I hit Erik?" Stark asked me in a pleasant, nonchalant voice."Wouldn't surprise me," Heath said.”

“We're going to win this war, you know, now that our army's together. But the world doesn't care who wins. It'll go on spinning, no matter how many people are slaughtered." After a moment, he added. "I almost wish it wouldn't, if we aren't allowed to go on spinning with it.”