"For the others, it was still just a tale, like all the tales we told, night by night, tales comical and strange, tales heroic and awe-inspiring, the tales that formed the fabric of our spirits."

"The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down."

"Your life was a hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities."

"When you look at death, it makes you understand the importance of the moment when you have life and death in front of you, and you witness seeing someone deteriorating in front of you - it's an overwhelming experience. If you don't learn from that, I don't know what else you're gonna learn."

"If I can draw the slightest smile across a single face obliterated by pain, in that act I will have begun to understand the power of an ordinary human being to perform the seemingly impossible in the life of another human being. And how can that experience do anything less than drive me to try and make the world smile."

"Do You think it matters if they're tiny or deep? He asked. Well, if they're not tiny breaths and they're not deep breaths, then they're just ... Breaths. Then you're just breathing for the sake of ... Breathing. ... Seize them. Feel them. Love them ..."

"I’ve lost control of the simple act of being able to breathe. I’m hyperventilating. “I don’t need you to show me how to breathe,” I say. “You don’t?” He looks skeptical. “I think I can handle the simple act of breathing without you."