“I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.”

“Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.”

“I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture it's beauty.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”

“I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.”

“Or is there no such thing as 'too late'? Is there only 'late' and is 'late' always better than 'never'? I don't know.”

“I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming.But it is not a story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile.”