I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.

People learned to live with the most unimaginable things.

I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?