I've never understood why people run to get out of the rain in the summertime... People will drive miles and miles to go jump in a cool swimming hole, but when it rains, they scatter.

Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.

Maybe all the secrets of life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information no one else had.

Writing is a supernatural thing.

Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.

Whole scenes of your life slip away forever if you don't put them down in ink.

That's what it means to be an American. To be free to love who and what you want, and to keep a lot in your heart at once.

I wondered if we were put on this earth only to destroy every beautiful thing, to make chaos. Or were we meant to overcome this? Did bad things happen so that goodness could show through in people?

I appricated that Nell was talking to me like a grown-up, but I had no idea what she meant. Still, I could see that the words flowed together like water over a riverbed.

It seems like there are so many homesick people in the world. It seems like so many of us live far away from where we were born.

The contemplative man always lives alone. Regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.

Kell managed an echo of her smile, and [Lila] gasped. "What's that on your face?"The smile vanished. "What?""Never mind, " she said, laughing. "It's gone.

In science, progress is possible. In fact, if one believes in Bayes' theorem, scientific progress is inevitable as predictions are made and as beliefs are tested and refined.

Life as we find it is too hard for us it entails too much pain too many disappointments impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies.

Expose yourself to aloneness. When a person is left alone, he starts thinking of higher reality - about death, life, soul, God and the mystery of all.

Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller, whose gifts are displayed on every page of this beautiful, daring, and deeply humane book.

I really enjoy being the child's 'welcoming committee' and to help someone usher his or her spirit into the world in a very peaceful way is very effortless to me.

The team with the best athletes doesn't usually win. It's the team with the athletes who play best together.

Service... Giving what you don't have to give. Giving when you don't need to give. Giving because you want to give.

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are.