The important thing is not whatever nonsense the voices are saying, but what the voices are feeling.
The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint.
That’s who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.
Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.
Suffering is universal. It’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them. Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.
Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.[repeated often in the rest of the book]
So everything happens for a reason and we’ll all go live in the clouds and play harps and live in mansions?
Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.
