If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.

Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.

Empathy was written from many male and female points of view because each character reacts differently to the emotional fallout from one binding circumstance

The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you.

Though I did not know her exact address, that she appeared to live almost within breathing distance of Robin, and that I lived with him, and that her pictures showed that she was now dating the mysterious Rupert Hunter, our despotic mothers, our absent fathers, the borders we had both crossed, all our many parallels and connections at every point, could not be chance. I saw it as evidence of the hidden connections between things, an all-powerful algorithm that sifted through chaos, singling out soulmates.

Waiting accentuates our helplessness, ant that is what God seems committed to revealing. Only when we know ourselves to be helpless do we fully experience his grace and glory. We have to wait for it.