So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity.

The most wicked criminals have God on their lips at all times, for God is the only one who can stomach them.

What is one person's diversion may be another's supreme test.

It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.

Hope is a straw hat hanging beside a window covered with frost.

When he comes into a room, you give a little gasp, deep inside, far inside,' someone once said when trying to describe what it meant to love.