We live in a vale of tears...We can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad.

Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax-collectors and fishermen. ... what he meant by this was that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished.

In reality things reveal nothing to us. It is people who, by looking into at things, discover a way of penetrating the Soul of the World.

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back – and at some point everyone looks back – she will hear her heart saying, “What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage; the certainty that you wasted your life.

One way or another, I have wound up destroying what I've loved. I've seen my dreams fall apart just when I seemed to achieve them. I always thought tat was just the way life was. My life anf everybody else's.

Dream and don't ask too many questions, or fear will overcome your feelings.

She regretted having taken his hand, she wanted to get away from there as soon as possible, to hide her shame, never again to see that man who had witnessed all that was most sordid in her, and who nevertheless continued to treat her with such tenderness. But again she remembered Mari's words: She didn't need to explain her life to anyone, not even to the young man standing before her.