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I realized then what I had known since I was a child watching my mother die of cancer—namely, that beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it.”

I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered. What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.

The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.

Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter’s hug, and realized that in the end—when all else is dust—loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave.

In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.

It was a dramatization of total chaos, a functional definition of confusion, an unchoreographed dance of sad violence. It was war.

The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer.

There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one’s sense of what is real.

“Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, “dreams are all that separate us from the machines.”

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.

Another friend, a child psychologist from the college, once commented that Rachel at age five showed the most reliable indicators of true giftedness in a young person: structured curiosity, empathy for others, compassion, and a fierce sense of fair play.