“We cannot carve or forcibly preserveor cultivate belief. If it will grow, it growsas we do - mostly after we have fallen”

“Do you know how,sometimes, when you first wake up,your pulse is so thorough, so slow,that you, and the one who is with you, and the room, and the opening light all seem to swelland subside and swel...”

“Certainly not the way someone will have told you the same thing yesterday, made you feel alternately - simultaneously - angry and guilty, guilty because complicit because flattered, therefore unfai...”

“And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn't possible.”

“She isn't here, but aroundhere, in a deep raindisappearing.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to thin...”

“Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.”

“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air ...”