“Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.”

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

“Once in a while, our thoughts drift and fade, back into the recessed hiding places where our memories are stored. At times we recall them- the memories of our loves, our youths, our life experiences. These dreams appear to us, and for seconds, minutes, or hours we are there once again.”

“It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.”

“Would you like to hear my story, Bella? It doesn't have a happy ending - but which of ours does? If we had happy endings, we'd all be under gravestones now.”

“Pleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home, when we have at our disposal once more our inner dark room, the door of which it is strictly forbidden to open while others are present.”