“From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.”

“Scars are just another kind of memory.”

“Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”

“If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasnt safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them b...”

“Life, thought Septimus, ... you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.”

“Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”

“I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

“Future warns us through current symptoms in nature.”

“Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with ...”

“No more war! Never again war! If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.”

“If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.”

“I wish it, I command it. Let my will take the place of a reason.”