“Clavain saw it all with sudden, heart-stopping clarity: all that mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was survival. Sentience that bowed down and accepted its own extinction—no matter what the long-term arguments, no matter how good the greater cause—was not the kind of sentience he was interested in preserving.”

“Long-term relationships--the ones that matter--are all about weathering the peaks and valleys.”

“He was gone, and she was broken hearted, that was all that mattered.”

“No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.”

“Giving then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows it has, or all that atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even supposing matter to be eternal, it will not account for the system of the universe or of the solar system, because it will not account for motion, and it is motion that preserves it. When, therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense importance, that without it the universe could not exist, and for which neither matter, nor any, nor all, the properties of matter can account, we are by necessity forced into the rational and comfortable belief of the existence of a cause superior to matter, and that cause man calls, God.”

“What mattered was stil there. That was what they all felt, and what surprised them all. What mattered couldnt be shaken.”

“I'm naive enough to think that love is always good no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances.”

“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”

“If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”

“With love, there are no rules. The heart decides and what it decides is all that really matters.”