I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.

Death is just the last scene of the last act.

Forgiveness is not a gift you give someone else, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.

In rural and struggling Lexington, Virginia, Lee's new postwar home, one writer joked darkly dollars were so scarce that they had to be introduced to one another when they met on Main Street.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.

Why is life speeded up so? Why are things so terribly, unbearably precious that you can't enjoy them but can only wait breathless in dread of their going?

It is little the sign of a wise or good man, to suffer temperance to be transgressed in order to purchase the repute of a generous entertainer.

Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag.

We set the table, but no one ate.

It's surely one of the strange phenomena of this decade that the most thoughtful gift you can bring a date is not flowers, chocolates, or ankle-length pearls, but a note from your doctor.

It's getting harder just to feel alive.