“What's the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it's so beautiful it's embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever.”

“Light is always more beautiful when it has to fight to be noticed, like sunlight fighting through the clouds after a rainstorm.”

“Look for the Sunlight through the Clouds.”

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

“Gorgeous, glowing rays of light...This was what true beauty and goodness looked like-- a spectral, luminescent gathering of beings so pure it hurt to look directly at them, like the most glorious eclipse, or maybe Heaven itself.”

“No, it's not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.”