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.

The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.

Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

It was so much more comfortable to be able to divide people into heroes and villains and expect them to play their allotted part.

Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.