You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy

The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporay Painting, Drawing Me In Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up.

For She Had Embodied The Great Perhaps--she Had Proved To Me That It Was Worth It To Leave Behind My Minor Life For Grander Maybes, And Now She Was Gone And With Her My Faith In Perhaps.

But Ultimately I Do Not Believe That She Was Only Matter. The Rest Of Her Must Be Recycled, Too. I Believe Now That We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts. If You Take Alaska's Genetic Code And You Add Her Life Experiences And The Relationships She Had With People, And Then You Take The Size And Shape Of Her Body, You Do Not Get Her. There Is Something Else Entirely. There Is A Part Of Her Greater Than The Sum Of Her Knowable Parts. And That Part Has To Go Somewhere, Because It Cannot Be Destroyed

She Said, "it's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth." "um, Okay. So What Is It?" "suffering," She Said. "doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?... Nothing's Wrong. But There's Always Suffering, Pudge. Homework Or Malaria Or Having A Boyfriend Who Lives Far Away When There's A Good-looking Boy Lying Next To You. Suffering Is Universal. It's The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About."

The Real Heroes Anyway Aren't The People Doing Things; The Real Heroes Are The People Noticing Things, Paying Attention. The Guy Who Invented The Smallpox Vaccine Didn't Actually Invent Anything. He Just Noticed That People With Cowpox Didn't Get Smallpox.