I guess there's a lot we hope for that never happens.

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

the darkness is a cresting wave. It sweeps me up out of my body until I float among the stars, those tine bright pores on the sky's skin. If only I could pass through them, I would end up on the other side, the right side, shadowless, perfectly illuminated, beyond the worries of this mundane world

Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love pople when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.

Because ultimately only the witness -- and not the actors -- knows the truth (Vyasa to Draupadi)

they say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. their gaze is a rope of gold binding each other. even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. they can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again

...this time I didn't launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement, that stopped me? I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy.