It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.

But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.

The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!

I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.