“So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.”

“Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.”

“It's funny whom we end up choosing to love and who ends up choosing to love us. It's rarely the people we think it should be.”

“So what are we supposed to do again, when we hate everything?You stop pretending life is such fun or makes sense. It's often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It's unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Like I love you, Elizabeth. You're the angel God sent me.”

“Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu."I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter."Then let's do it. That's us in spades.”

“We all know that everything will end some day, but we can not let that slow us. We must not let that stop us from living. ”