“What are we all chasing? Nella wonders. To live, of course. To be unbound from the invisible ropes that Johannes spoke of in his study. Or to be happy in them, at least.”

“You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still.”

“This city is like no other city in the world. It is brilliant but it is bloated, and I've never called it home”

“The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil.”

“The rules of this house are written in water. I must either sink or swim.”

“Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out.”

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.”

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”

“Dont cry and dont rage. Understand.”

“The only way to heal yourself was to understand. Understand the love or the hate or the cowardice, or the impulsiveness, the lack of will of the one who hurt you--the circumstances that twisted the...”