“We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.”

Art can be very political but that can’t be the purpose of art, it can’t be the driving force. It isn’t with any of the books that I love, anyway.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

Songs are as sad as the listener.

I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything.

I am sure people tell you this constantly but if you looked up ‘incredibly beautiful’ in the dictionary there would be a picture of you.

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.

It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.

In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.

I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember,

The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn’t stop each other on the street to say I love you.

Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.

I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.