That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.

After three days without one, the desire to read a newspaper vanished. And really, one was happier without.

Weak people can be very stubborn.

The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper, the sale of a house, the price of a ring.

One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.

He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy.