“Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all.”

“I hesitated for all the right reasons. And I accepted for all the wrong ones.”

“When the wind is right and the cloud is gone, you can see down this road as far as Darjeeling," I told her. "But it is a long and difficult road, full of perils, and if a traveller on foot were to look at the length of it, his spirit would be overcome and he would sit down and refuse to go any further. You must not look to the end of the road, Portia. Look only to the step in front of you. That you can do. Just one step. And you will not make the journey alone.”

“But this is a thing that I know--to live with fear is not to live at all. A man will die every moment he is afraid.”

“They have different accents in America " Brisbane smiled. "Just as we do here." I waved a hand. "They all sound alike to me.”

“Julia, we are all children at Christmastime.”“You are not,” I pointed out.He gave me a shadowy smile. “I think you told me once I was born old.”

“...it all fell into place and I simply knew, as one knows that fire is hot and sleep is sweet. It was just that sudden, that elemental, and it occurred to me then that the truth is precisely that--elemental. It is the essence of itself; it cannot be argued or winnowed down to something less than what it is.”