"Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will."

"The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice."

"The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit."

"Leef hard en goed en schoon en wild. Kijk goed, voel beter. Wees niet bang. Kies voor wat u blij maakt, wat het ook moge zijn. Durf proberen wat te lastig lijkt. Leg de lat hoog genoeg. Koester en laat u koesteren. Geef anderen wat ze verdienen, en uzelf minstens ook. Blijf hopen, willen, dromen, wensen."

"In my end is my beginning."

"Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt."

"Pieces. A bit for someone here. A bit there. And sometimes they don't add up to anything whole. But you are so busy dancing. Delivering. You don't have time to notice. Or are afraid to notice. And then one day you have to look. And it's true. All of your pieces fill up other people's holes. But they don't fill your own."

"All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass."

"He was fucking sad. That's it. That's the point. He knows life is never going to get any different for him. That there's no fixing him. It's always going to be the same monotonous depressing bullshit. Boring, sad, boring, sad. He just wants it to be over."

"The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket."

"Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.""But what if he is your friend?" Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. "Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?""You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?"We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all. I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong."

"I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered."

"Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose."

"For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

"Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way."

"We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe."

"Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are."

"As the rain falls and the sun shines, they grow, grow, grow; minds so open, they go through life aware and accepting, seeing light where there's dark, seeing possibility in dead ends, tasting victory as others spit out failure, questioning where others accept. Just a little less jaded, a little less cynical."

"To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime."

"Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course."

"You said you want to became Hokage. I have become the Kazekage. If you are willing to bear the name Kage, you have to do what you must do."

"Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins."