“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”

“No," said a voice, "the only thing wrong on a night like that is that there is a world and you must come back to it.”

“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.”

“We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of on good rain and black loam.”

“We haven't been too bad, have we?""No, nor enormously good. I suppose that's the trouble - we haven't been much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of awful thi...”

“Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. Youve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”

“We scarified a mosquito. I bet that's what did it. It was probably a virgin too.”

“I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is pos...”

“She fucking turns me inside out.""Women who matter have a way of doing that." Lucas scowled. "We sound like a couple of women, talking about feelings. I think Sascha's having a bad influence on me....”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”