What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

...life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision.

And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.

Why should anything happen when everything has happened?