“He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?”

“Socrates had it backward. He thought the unexamined life is not worth living. I think no one's life holds up to examination. The more time you spend thinking the more you notice that everyone else is doing something better or more important than you.”

“How can I be more important than someone else? Isn’t every life important?”

“If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.”

“So come Cinderella, let me take you to the ball again. Perhaps you will see more than I did, or perhaps you will begin to understand how difficult it is to understand. Truth is never easily wrested from the stuff of life, and this stuff was even stranger and sometimes more repellent than the usual fare.”

“Character is more important than rank. Loyalty is more important than wealth. And what the people who truly know you think, is more important than your status in the eyes of strangers.”