When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself.

Sometimes asking God for a reason for something is like asking Him why the sky is blue. There is a complex, scientific reason for it, Claire, but most children, including you, are content with knowing it is blue because it is. If we understood everything about everything, we would have no need for faith.

I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.

No one thinks much about their ability to breathe they just do it. It's when a person can't breathe, that they suddenly realize they'd been doing something truly marvelous all along.

You shouldn't imagine things that you haven't a shred of proof happened.

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't.

When we trust someone, we believe what they tell us is true. We experience it as being true. It's not the experience itself that empowers us to believe it. It is the trust.

Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts.