“Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled...in a unique and inimitable way.”

“In the midst of shadow and pain His light leads the way. We need to focus on the light, not the shadow.”

“...for human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born..”

“My pains are but trifling things compared to my joy.”

“So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties.”

“In the three minutes it takes the song to play I'm caught in a magic world of harmony and joy, a truly ecstatic joy, where the aching longing to be somewhere else, out of this city, out of this country, out of this body and out of this life, is kept at bay.”