Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.

You're not me. You can't feel like I feel." "I can feel." "No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine." "It's not fine. It's just not so bad.

Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

...all cynicism masks a failure to cope.

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.