Ben

“Dear God, thank you for warm summer nights and candlelight and good food. But thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

“If God could do things like that, the world wouldn’t look the way it does. He can’t reach down and change things. He can’t stop any of us doing what we choose to do.'

“What use is he then?”

Oenone shrugged. 'He sees. He understands. He knows how you’re feeling. He knows how Theo felt. He knows how it feels to die. And when we die, we go to him.'

'To the Sunless Country, you mean? Like ghosts?”'

Oenone shook her head patiently. 'Like children. Do you remember what it was like to be a tiny child? When everything was possible and everything was given to you, and you knew that you were safe and loved, and the days went on forever? When we die, it will be like that again. That’s how it is for Theo now, in heaven.”
― Philip Reeve, A Darkling Plain

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“So sure am I that many things which illness has led me to see are true, that I would endlessly rather never be well than lose sight of them.”
― George MacDonald, Paul Faber, Surgeon