“It’s not that we grow old, I thought, but that we grow old in decline and discomfort, and these hardships are made worse by the awareness that nothing will improve. No coming days will dawn brighter than the last that dawned, and this sorrow is further deepened by a fear of death…”

“It is important to keep old things, he insisted, because it was through them alone that new things could be judged.”

“The last best hope of life is that at some point during living it, all that you did wrong will suddenly teach you to do right.”

“A man with no one to revere, Julian said, is a man alone.' At that moment, he seemed to consider such loneliness the worst of fates, a sentence he would not have imposed upon the vilest man on earth. And yet, at times, I thought now, he had seemed to impose that very loneliness upon himself.”

“...I decided that there was perhaps no ash quite so cold as the one left by an unrealized ambition...”

“Perspective gets lost in moral certainties. Which only means that no one was ever burned at the stake by a doubter.”

“He looked at me intently, from what seemed behind the veil of a grave experience. Then slowly and prophetically, he said the scariest thing I'd ever heard: "Because the answer to a heartfelt question, Jack, will always break your heart.”