"I have a big hole in my heart,' I said. 'But it'll close over.'I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil,' she said. 'But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?'That's good advice,' I said. 'I hope I can manage it."

"Five million people die unnecessarily each year because of illness related to lack of potable water. Half of them are children under the age of five. To bring it home, think about this: one child dies from lack of clean water every twelve seconds."

"I wondered how much time they'd spent practicing entrances like this one, smoothing away their rough edges and rendering them brief but potent expressions of effortless grace. I decided to stop thinking about it, and just be grateful that there was no circumstance, however, unlikely, that could put me in their place."

"I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be."

"If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end."

"This was one of those non-glamorous parts about college that people never tell you about - worrying that the dilapidated apartment hosting a party would fall apart with you in it."