“I understand it so simply now, it is a love that lives in the body but unlike the body it never dissolves. It lasts forever.”

“As he reconstructs [the] translation, he realizes the truth is infinitely more complicated, that we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human.”

“[Mumei] didn't seem to know what "suffering" meant; he simply coughed when food wouldn't go down, or vomited it back up. Of course he felt pain, but it was pure pain, unaccompanied by any "Why am I the only one who has to suffer like this?" sort of lamentations.”

“We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another.”

“Hollywood and Silicon Valley changed the world, are changing it, from a world of places and materials to a world of representations and information, a world of vastly greater reach and less solid grounding.”

“It was a beautiful morning, light touching the farthest edges of the plains. Clara noticed the beauty and thought it strange that she could still respond to it, tired as she was... But she loved the fine light of the prairie mornings; it had resurrected her spirits time after time through the years, when it seemed that dirt and cold and death would crush her. Just to see the light spreading like that, far on toward Wyoming, was her joy. ”

“It's like you said, you can drive yourself crazy thinking about these things. The other lives you could have had. And the life you did have, after it's over- where did it go? I mean, what are you supposed to do with it?”

“The air is spiced with bay laurel and lemon eucalyptus and pepper trees. The scent retrieves all kinds of things he once knew and reminds him of things he never will. He breathes in for a long time. Phenomenal, to be such a small, weak, short-lived being on a planet with billions of years left to run”

“To the Taoist, Nothing is something, and Something--at least the sort of thing that many consider to be important—is really nothing at all. ”

“Dad? If you went to sea or to war... if something happened to you? I would just hold still and think of how your hands move when you walk, and then you'd still be here. ”

“You might note that the most noble concepts often emerge from the most coarse and commonplace things. Beauty is consonance is a sublime thought, handed to me by a ruminating courier.”

“Dear friends, I have seen deeply that nothing can be by itself alone, that everything has to inter-be with everything else. I have seen that all beings are endowed with the nature of awakening.”

“What makes a mark [on paper] interesting? It's movement. Lines have a speed in them, which you can see. That's why drawings that show the marks are appealing.”

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”

“Here's another kind of art I like: the anonymous, the cobbled together, the hand-me-down, the postscript; collaborations between strangers that marry jubilantly, that don't quite fit.”

“What is a woman? Merely stating the problem suggests an immediate answer. It would never occur to a man to write a book on the singular situation of males in humanity... Woman determines and differentiates herself in relation to the man, and he does not in relation to her.”

“Love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love”

“We tell ourselves that to be "civilized" means to conquer, but perhaps we can change that narrative: "To be civilized is to find balance, harmony, and peace with nature.””

“(4.24) If you seek tranquility, do less. Do what's essential. Do less, better.”

“It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency. In this way, attention forms the ground not just for love, but for ethics.”

“ Love is as love does. Love is an act of will- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

“Maybe, in the absence of any certainty, we should just assume that we're going to live a long time. Maybe that's the only way forward.”

“13 'Why?' People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. ”

“We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable.”

“Perhaps we are like a deaf person 'hearing' sound by placing our hands on a speaker, limited in our perspective but knowing and feeling that there's something beyond our senses.”

“We must be careful not to fill our lives with images of experiences instead of experiences themselves.”