At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.

What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.