“The world was full of righteous things that remained undone.”

“I don't want to change the world," she kept saying. "I just want to change one corner of it. If I reach a few of the kids I look after, just a few, that will be enough for me.”

“It was hardly a boom-town, but it was a faltering step in the right direction.”

“...I believe that nothing that once was can be completely undone. Even if destroyed in the material world and forgotten by men, it remains and will remain alive in the memory of an infinite being for which the past as well as the future is always present, and that is thus the greatest, the only true historian, and the keeper of the eternal tradition of which even our best human traditions ...are but shadows and images.”

“It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.”

“For years now, I have waited to grow up. The truth, that I've learned, is that age has no reality except in the physical world. Our essence, of being human, is resistant to the passage of time. Our core and inner selves can remain eternal. Which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we thought we were in full bloom. As for me, I'm still quite a child inside..”

“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.”