“I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.”

“I did not realize what a gift I had been given until it was too late, forever too late. Must life always be that way?”

“I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment'.”

“From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”

“I fantasized how no matter what happened, no one could ever come between us, call it wishful thinking, I called it a fact.”

“ I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”