“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.”

“We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.”

“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.”

“The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.”

“A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses...”

“Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.- Yes; it's a funny habit.- No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, howe...”

“Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get. ”

“...luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That...”

“And yet for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean. Superfluity comes sooner by whit...”