“I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were ‘I love you.’ There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26)”

“Having reached 451 books as of now doesn't help the situation. If I were to be dying now, I would be murmuring, "Too bad! Only four hundred fifty-one." (Those would be my next-to-last words. The last ones will be: "I love you, Janet.") [They were. -Janet.]”

“Just then, in that instant, I saw His eyes. I recognised them. They were the eyes of that trembling father in a smoke-filled room on the ninety-third floor of Tower One, dialing his little girls for the last time. Those were the eyes behind that calming voice singing 'Amazing Grace' in a crowded and slippery stairwell, trapped outside a roof door when the ceilings began to cave. The eyes of the people who stayed behind with the handicapped victims waiting for police officers who never made it up the stairs. Those were the eyes of firemen who pushed me to safety, the doctor who cared for me for more than a year free of charge, the therapist who visited my home regularly so that I could sleep a little, the children who loved me, the brother who prayed nonstop, and the pastor who became my friend. Those were the eyes of God.”

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”

“I have lived nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, hunger ... cruelty beyond belief. I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets. I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle ... or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I have held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words ... only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question, "Why?"I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

“I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying.”