So all I'm saying is, everything that seems important--our quarrels, or philosophical differences--in the end, it doesn't matter much. You know? In the end, what matters is what remains.

All these tears shed in the world, where do they go? If one could capture all of them, they could water the parched. Then perhaps these tears would have value and all this grief would have some meaning. Otherwise, it was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss.

The Forty Rules of Love is a wise, joyous page-turner... and one that speaks urgently to our war-ravaged times.

Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out.

What she had believed was indignation or rage or a deep intolerance for injustice came down to this: she was irreducibly in love with this bewitching planet, this thrilling life, this heartbreaking species she belonged to, with its capacity for stupefying destruction and breathtaking magnanimity.

You felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down

Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened.