"But tonight I finally made the connection that change always strolled hand in hand with loss, with upheaval, and that I would always feel it keenly because in the end, I did not live under the same sky as most other people. (p179)."

"Misperceiving that there is one correct choice is a common mistake. Coming to understand that there are usually a few good choices--and then there's the one you pick, commit to, and make great--is the best way to make flexible, optimal, good decisions in life."

"We want to know. We want to know who we are and what we are capable of.I want to know.And yet we were dragged into another war. Another seemingly inevitable and gruesome legacy passed down, along with soma."

"Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be."

"After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it."

"I wouldn't change anything. I think that it's important to let things happen, and stay 'happened'. I think that's all part of the learning curve, part of fate. I'm just glad that it happened."

"Before the next minute had passed, they had all fallen to the ground. Just like that. As though someone had reached inside and turned off a switch.'What happened?' Matt asked, gasping.I went from one person to the next, trying to wake them up, but they were all dead, wrote Daft Donald."

"Today is sacred - for it will never come again. What could be more important than living this day with attention and the intention to be of benefit, to the best of your ability, to all you encounter?"

"Something has spoken to me in the night...And told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: '[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth."