“If I was ever to have a child, this is what I'd tell it: 'Child,' I'd say, 'don't never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you're going, child. ”

“Have you ever watched a child learning to walk? Before this week, I never had, but there's a certain grace to it. Well, if not grace, then tenacity. Fall down nine times--get up ten. And the tenth time you get where you're going, you don't stop, not for obstacles, not for other people telling you to stop. You don't listen to anything but that inner voice until you arrive where you want to be.”

“I'd never have believed I'd see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

“What must I do now?” Mrs. Muller considered her silently for a while. “You are still a child. You must go where you are told and do as you are told. But it won’t always be so. Soon you will be in charge of yourself. Until that time: Be aware. Listen. Look. Touch. Smell. And remember. But for now, you must go home.”

“You get started on something and you go where it takes you and you set aside other things because you don't have any choice. Because if you didn't set them aside you would never be able to go on. And then if you're lucky enough you get back to where you started and you realize your mistake. You realize how difficult it is to keep everything in your heart at the same time. How impossible. You can only keep so much and still go on. You come back for the rest if you're lucky enough.”

“Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.”