Anthony Doerr: Thing

“How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?”

“The way her fingers flutter through the space around her. Each a thing he hopes never to forget.”

“isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it.”

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the globe . . . The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the living infinite.”

“A scientist’s work is determined by two things: his interests and those of his time. Everything has led to this.”

“There are, he assures her, no such things as curses. There is luck, maybe, bad or good. A slight inclination of each day towards success or failure. But no curses.”

“It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”