..which should teach you something about this world. That it's a place where whatever you work for and care about is bound to be taken away from you sooner or later, and there isn't a thing you can do about it.

Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.

We have great cities to visit: New York and Washington, Paris and London; and further east, and older than any of these, the legendary city of Samarkand, whose crumbling palaces and mosques still welcome travelers on the Silk road. Weary of cities? Then we’ll take to the wilds. To the islands of Hawaii and the mountains of Japan, to forests where Civil War dead still lie, and stretches of sea no mariner ever crossed. They all have their poetry: the glittering cities and the ruined, the watery wastes and the dusty; I want to show you them all. I want to show you everything.

You'll learn, honey. Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst.

True joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.

Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love

The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there'd be no show at all.