“The lives and deaths of characters in stories and poems, however tragic, help us to learn about the world and - if we are brave enough - to change it.”

“The death of these people might have changed the world, Grace, so we might have changed the world, Grace, so we sometimes have to look at death not as something sad, but as something to be glad for. Sometimes death changes our lives in ways we never expect. It can bring with it every emotion; we have to learn to recognize the ones that help us and the ones that hurt us. And we also have to be willing to accept that with everything else, death also brings with it love. That is why we must always be grateful and appreciate it, even if it brings some sadness with it.”

“There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough.We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.”

“Of all the principles I'd learn about story, the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.”

“We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.”

“If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another. ”