We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.

There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't.

We need never be without hope because we can never be irreparably broken.

I believe in hope, in what is something called ”radical hope.” I believe there is hope for all of us, even amid the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probaby. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to buld a fire in the darkness.r

When people we love are suffering, we want to make it better. But sometimes - often, in fact - you can't make it better. I'm reminded of something my supervisor said to me when I was a student chaplain: "Don't just do something. Stand there.

What a word that is, en-courage. Though our dreams be tossed and blown, still we sing ourselves and one another into courage.

And I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past— seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death. I'll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them— and hope that perhaps, somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.

You can't know what an experience will mean to future-you until you are future-you. You need millions of seconds of perspective, which ultimately, only time can buy.

We don't get to choose if we get hurt in this world, old man, but we do have a say in who hurts us. I know I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.I do, Augustus. I do.