“Then he exploded. "No!" he said. That familiar injunction. I'd heard it so many times. "No. I cannot take this steel. It would not be correct." He opened his knife drawer. "It goes here," he said, "until you return."(That's how you leave: by never saying good-bye.)And I learned that: to return. I came back the following year and the year after that. I hope to return every year (after all, I may never have the chance to learn so much), until I have no one to return to. (301)”

“I will make arrangements for you and Portia to return to London the following day. I will be closing up the house. I am leaving England for a while.""For how long?" I asked him, determined to keep my composure."Until I am quite recovered from you," he said evenly. "When will you return?""Never.”

“A year shall I endure for every day that passes until you return.”

“After Elsa’s death, Einstein established a routine that as the years passed varied less and less. Breakfast between 9 and 10 was followed by a walk to the institute. After working until 1pm he would return home for lunch and a nap. Afterwards he would work in his study until dinner between 6.30 and 7pm. If not entertaining guests, he would return to work until he went to bed between 11 and 12. He rarely went to the theatre or to a concert, and unlike Bohr, hardly ever watched a movie. He was, Einstein said in 1936, ‘living in the kind of solitude that is painful in one’s youth but in one’s more mature years is delicious’.”

“I wish you did return my regard," he said. "More than I have ever wished anything in my life! Perhaps you may yet learn to do so: I should warn you that I don't easily despair!”

“Perceval spends twenty years wandering in the woods, looking for the thing he had found, that was given to him, that seemed so easy, that was not. Later, when things were difficult for me with my work and I felt that I had lost or turned away from something I couldn't even identify, it was the Perceval story that gave me hope. There might be a second chance...in fact, there were more than two chances-many more. I know, after fifty years that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning never stops.”