I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.
Children are the closest we have to wisdom, and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.
I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment – we are all defined by something we can’t change.
Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.
…I like stories very much,” the priest said. “They help me understand myself better.
[I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.
I wanted to explain that trusting is harder than being trusted.
Life had called his name, and without thinking, he had stepped forward. He wondered if perhaps he was becoming the person he had always wanted to be.
But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists—seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt.Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.
You were unsure which pain is worse — the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.
Your grief is something to be admired – the pain of severance. A scar where something used to be.
Music helps us understand where we have come from but, more importantly, what has happened to us.
We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.
When a person is loved, they are granted the strength of all seas.
Actually, years mean nothing. It’s what’s inside them.
In the end I didn’t know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.
That’s truth, Harvey, not what’s written on a piece of paper or in blood too small to see – but the memory of how it felt being together.
Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.
Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in theuniverse, except that everyone else is still here.
Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.
He realized this early on, and realized too that what people think are their lives are merely its conditions. The truth is closer than thought and lies buried in what we already know.
The present grows within the boundaries of the past.
Succes is really nothing more than the record of failure. To be successful means you must be willing to fail more than anyone else.
The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.
The love of aman is like a drop of color into something clear.
The very best and the very worst of life will come from [their] ability to love strangers.
I tried to convey to the boy how people’s lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.
It is the afternoon of my birthday, but still the morning of my life.
When he smiles, they mostly look away. But Martin likes to think they carry his smile for a few blocks – that even the smallest gesture is something grand.
We all have different lives, Martin believes – but in the end probably feel the same things, and regret the fear we thought might somehow sustain us.
Royal Young’s writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.
I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the end of the world.
Should you ever feel too lonely…listen for the roar of the sea- for in it are all those who’ve been and all those who are to come.
In his heart, some tiny piece of what hadn’t happened would lodge.
He might be famous (local newspaper or television) for finding it, true—but if fame takes away the thing it celebrates, then Sebastien would prefer the inspired silence. We’re all famous in our own hearts anyway.
The beauty of artifacts is in how they reassure us we’renot the first to die.
He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone.
Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.
Grief is a room without doors – but somehow, with its tinsel and cliches, Christmas finds a way in.
In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom.
Libraries are the ultimate restaurants for brain food. I sleep better knowing there are libraries. I would take a bullet for a librarian.
The joy of style lies not in how we look to other people, but in how we look to ourselves – and the most memorable and beautiful outfits are simply those that, in some rare moment of joy, we found the courage to share with the world.
If you travel too often, you actually come face-to-face with what you’re trying to escape. I feel like when I travel alone, sometimes it’s like being locked in a hotel room with my own worst enemy.