You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.

It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.

What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.

Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.

She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket. He hadn't given her the thousand dollars she'd asked for-he'd given her ten thousand.

Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed.

Sometimes you have to sit alone and enjoy the nature and try to see in the sky transparent faces.

Courage mounteth with occasion.

The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life whether the case be one of coolish baked beans or an unrequited affection.

I think there's always a lesson you can learn from any situation.

How can I govern others, who can't even govern myself?

It is written in the Jewish law book, the Talmud, that only the Jew is human, that Gentiles are only animals.

I am a poor mendicant. My earthly possessions consist of six spinning wheels, prison dishes, a can of goat's milk, six homespun loincloths and towels and my reputation, which cannot be worth much.

What people believe prevails over the truth.

Materialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason.

Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.