He had won but he didn't feel like a winner.

Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases.

Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn’t try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders. … The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted

It haunted him all night, while he slept alone; it was still there in the morning, when he swallowed his coffee and backed down the driveway in the crumpled old Ford. And riding to work, one of the youngest and healthiest passengers on the train, he sat with the look of a man condemned to a very slow, painless death. He felt middle-aged.

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.