It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.

The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.

The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears; and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories.

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.