“Was something worth having, though, if it didn't present a challenge?”

“Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beat if it is allowed the mastery.”

“Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?”

“She was not sure that her deafness had strengthened her character. She was not even sure she had met a challenge. A silent world was as natural to her as a noisy one must be to them, she reflected. But people tended to assume that deaf persons could function as people only if they learned to conform to a world of sound. What about the challenge of silence? Very few people of hearing ever accepted it or even knew that there was a challenge there. People of hearing feared silence...”

“Future indifferences is no consolation for present pain.”

“Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.”

“The longing for something beyond yourself, beyond anything you have ever known or dreamed of?”