My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.

That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.

Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone. I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was.