But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?

But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.

I have always been a spectator of life, you know, never a participant. Never. But now I am. Today I am, and I an awed and deliriously happy. This is the adventure I asked for, the adventure I am having I will be forever grateful to you.

And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?