The finest thing under the sun and moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or despair. I marvel at human endurance.

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me best to another.

You make me miserable. You really do, I want you to know that. Much as I love you, much as I need you, much as I can't exist without you, you make me miserable.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.

I’d thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language I had for it.

Thank God he killed the guy. Oh, now, wait a minute. What kind of a prayer was that!

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.