There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth.
For many years I have known that you had escaped this realization of our intrinsic weakness, of our humanity, but I knew you must come to it, for we all do.
Nothing save witnessing the strewn vista of the stars could convince a man that timelessness and God existed.
I’m perfectly all right. Yet there’s something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred.
She lay night after night in a confused terror, trying to imagine if death was perpetual night, or an abyss of flames she had to jump over to reach the golden fields on the far side, or a sphere like the inside of a gigantic balloon full of soaring choirs and light attenuated through limitless stained-glass windows.
She was young and she had never quite got to savor love, if for a moment or two she had tasted it. She wanted to roll it round on her tongue, get the bouquet of it into her lungs, spin it dizzying to her brain.
Her tears were blinding her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for.
And you’ve forgotten one thing about your precious roses, Ralph—they’ve got nasty, hooky thorns!
There are worse things than dying, we both know that.
It never occurred to that subtle, devious mind that an outward display of frankness might be more mendacious than any evasion.
But his going had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever filling it.
There was something awful in her eyes; something so dark and chilling that the skin on the back of his neck crawled and automatically he put his hand up to stroke it.
All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.
Their mother’s blossoming happiness had affected them deeply; it was like seeing the start of a good drenching rain.
Perfection in anything is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.
I wanted my memories…nothing but my memories. Whereas you’ve no choice. Memories are all you’ve got.
The cats, too. Haven’t you noticed them around the sheds? As wild and vicious as panthers; won’t let a human being near them. But they hunt magnificently, and call no man master or provider.
For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.
The pain didn’t fade. It seemed to grow worse, and in a colder, uglier way.
There is nothing pretty about grief, Rain, nor any way your witnessing mine could alleviate it.
Her pain had the unreasoning desolation peculiar to children, magnified and mysterious, yet her very youth buried it beneath everyday events, and diminished its importance.
His eyes were as clear as pale water in the shade, as if they reached all the way back in time to the very beginning, and saw everything as it really was.
And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget.
No wonder you like cats so much. You’re one yourself, playing with your prey for your own amusement.
I’m never, never, never going to love anyone! If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do, I tell you!
What’s a daughter? Just a reminder of the pain, a younger version of oneself who will do all the things one has done, cry the same tears.
He had measured the time in hatred and resentment.
No one else can ever feel your pain.
We all have contempt for whatever there’s too many of. Out here it’s sheep, but in the city it’s people.
The stage was simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness.