You can't eat hope,' the woman said. You can't eat it, but it sustains you,' the colonel replied.

It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.

She knew that he loved her above all else, more than anything in the world, but only for his own sake.

I don't have a method. All I do is read a lot, think a lot, and rewrite constantly. It's not a scientific thing.

Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity.

Do not allow me to forget you

Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.