Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

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

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 not admire greatness that has no substance.

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.

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?