“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”

“That was surely the purest kind of kything. Mr. Jenkins had never had that kind of communion with another human being, a communion so rich and full that silence speaks more powerfully than words.”

“Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning. Perhaps I should feel insignificant, but instead I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this — and out of nothing — can still count the hairs of my head.”

“Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.”

“People are more than just the way they look.”

“It's a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them--and they simply don't need you. That's all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they'll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on--this desperate need--and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.”

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”