the fruit of life is experience, not happiness.
... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?
This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.
There is no corner too quiet, or too far away, for a woman to make sorrow in it.
But what do we know of the heart nearest to our own? What do we know of our own heart?
I wear the key of memory, and can open every door in the house of my life.