Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.

Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your last chance to experience them, you see, and they all want to be lived at that moment.

And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me." It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed. Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.

I realized a long time ago, with a certain amazement, that no mattter how important something is in your life, no matter how huge it is, how much space it takes up in your heart and in your thoughts, unless you mention it to other people, they have no idea it exists.

Only the strongest are put through the fire,' Josiah said. 'And the forge creates things of great strength and beauty.' 'Then I shall be truly glorious by the time my tenure ends.

she had something I could not have, and so I resented her—but I realized the fault was mine and not hers.

He is so kind that he makes me search my soul to find new ways to be compassionate to others.