“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.”

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

“But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?”

“We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.”

“We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer.”

“Because in the end, the measure of a well-lived life is not titles or riches. It’s not even measured by the people we please, especially at the cost of our own souls. No, the true measure of a well-lived life is how well we love…and how well we are loved in return.”