- What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. (loc. 180-181)
- All those years forgetting how easily you can belong to everything simply by listening. (loc. 189-191)
- We speak only with the voices of those we can hear ourselves (loc. 194-195)
- To become human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. (loc. 365-366)
- Our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there: we are creatures who are on our way, our journey a series of impending anticipated arrivals. (loc. 654-655)
- We are in effect, always close; always close to the ultimate secret: that we are more real in our simple wish to find a way than any destination we could reach: the step between not understanding that and understanding that, is as close as we get to happiness. (loc. 661-663)
- What is real is almost always, to begin with, hidden and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. (loc. 672-674)
- Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about ourselves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future. (loc. 674-680)
- Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair (loc. 694-694)
- To see and experience despair fully in our body is to begin to see it as a necessary, seasonal visitation, and the first step in letting it have its own life, neither holding it nor moving it on before its time. (loc. 714-715)
- But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the self nor of the other; the ultimate touchstone is witness: the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone. (loc. 754-758)