“The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life… Or end it… One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.”

“Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.”

“The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are.”

“Doubt is a storm. We either ride it out, or we change our course. Neither is right or wrong--to stay or go. Twenty years ago, should you have really married X, or Y? This college, or that? A life-changing decision one makes becomes the right decision by the fact of simply having been made.”

“with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.”

“Fear about what, exactly?''Everything,' I said. 'But mostly just the realization that all it takes is one moment for your entire world to turn upside down. One wrong decision, and it's over.”