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

“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. ”

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

“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.”

“Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”

“Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.”

“Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.”

“I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.”

“We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same con...”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”