The Boy in the Moon Quotes

“I understand how insubstantial this seems, how minor: man buys a coffee in French! But it was Gégé and Jean-Claude, and my own Walker, who reminded me how to do that simpest thing. They reminded me not to be ashamed. That is never a small accomplishment.”
― Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son

“Le Cardinal's conclusion suprised him. L'Arche produced a collective intelligence that was greater than the sum of its parts; interaction between the able and the disabled produced points of view that were more sophisticated than either group reported on its own.”
― Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son

“I sketched a picture of Jean-Claude in my notebook; he saw me, so I showed it to him. He erupted in pleasure. It seemed I'd found a way into his trust and his company—into his world. It was easier to do this with the residents than I had imagined. There were not rules, no prescribed routes: you went with what was available, with the most human thing you could catch on to.”
― Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son

“There's a beautiful text of Martin Luther King's,' Vanier said, without hesitation. 'Someone said to him, will it always be like this— that someone will always despise people and want to get rid of others? And he said yes, until we have all learned to recognize, accept, and love what is despicable in all of us. And what is that despicability? That we are born to die. That we have not full control of our lives. And that's part of our makeup. But we need to discover that we are built for something else, too, which is togetherness, and that we have to try and stop this need to be the best.”
― Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son