“The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake.”

“It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.”

“You are good when you are fully awake in your speech.”

“Barefoot or first thing in the morning, I feel beautiful. I didn't always feel that way, but I feel that way now. When somebody loves you, and when you make somebody else happy, when your presence seems to make them happy, you suddenly feel like the most beautiful person in the world.”

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”

“This was the gift of recovery, he thought. The ability to be here in this moment with the female he loved and be fully aware, fully awake, fully present. Undiluted.”