“The universe is always speaking to us. ... Sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.”

“It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise.”

“The sea slapped ominously, confessing its strategic impartiality. The sea is an international sea, and the sky a universal sky. Often we forget that. Often we think that what is verging upon us is ours alone. We forget that there are other sides entirely.”

“It was strange to experience in one night the difference between wanting something you cannot have and having something you cannot want. I wished it wasn't my time to learn it. No one else seemed to be learning much of anything.”

“Our vocation is not something we do for God- which would put the burden on us to perform and achieve. Instead, it is a way we participate in God's work. For God himself is engaged not only in the work of salvation, but also in the work of preserving and maintaining His creation.”

“God knows suffering, not because he created it, but because He experiences it with us. ... It is also true that although God knows suffering, He doesn't explain it. I waited and searched and beat myself up for that, and I know now that it just flat-out doesn't happen. God only walks us through it and out into a place where we can once again be free. He does this not because we believe some rigid this or that about Him. He does it because He believes in us. He doesn't ask us to go out into the world telling people why they suffer. Even if we knew why, it wouldn't hurt any less. What we need to know is how to help each other live with it, and live well.”

“The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it's the look of exhausted loyalties. Perhaps it's only right that we grow overbig in someone else's space. Perhaps we need to tire and differentiate, leave and adapt.”