“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

‘You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.’ ”

“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.”

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.

Small, slight, unimportant Joan. Just one person of five billion, on a small planet orbiting a small star, in a humble galaxy, one of billions of galaxies. Joan is so insignificant and yet, look what God had given her. Look at all that God had given her. Look at what no one will ever be able to take away.

The wonder of the night sky was as good a place to connect with it as the smell of a grapefruit or the warmth of a pocket of sun.

“What an awful thing to do to a person! To make them believe they can have the things they never believed they deserved. And then take it away. What an awful thing.”

She was no longer Joan, or no longer only Joan. She was also part of this larger body, this larger self. That could only exist when they were together.

“I don’t know but I…I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found,” Joan said.