After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.

I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled. But the front of the head is where the pain begins.

Because faithfulness is not a human question, but a divine one.

That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.

It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.