“Whatever we carry inside us shapes everyone we touch”

“A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us.”

“Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough.”

“We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”

“The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us.”

“We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.”