Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.

If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music.

I remember my father checking on a mountain kid who hadn't been coming to school. My father had this beautiful Harris tweed overcoat. He came back with a knife cut all down one side. The parents had told him it was none of his business why their son wasn't going to school.

And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life. Certainly neither she nor Inman were the people they had been the last time they were together. And she believed maybe she liked them both better now.

Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.