“How to explain... that the warning signs were so slight? That disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips?”

“Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.”

“Few family members act on warning signs when they first present themselves in a schizophrenic patient. It is often quite hard to realize, in fact, that something is clinically wrong.”

“It's not how hard you hit. It's how hard you get hit...and keep moving forward.”

“But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.”

“Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.”