“Everything is arranged," John Robertson told me.Thank God."I forgot to mention that we appear to have one small problem," he said.Okay..."Evidently it seems Winston Holder has already left this morning to the border and Gbarnga. He took a journalist in."A journalist? Who?"I don't know who. They thought it must be you."But it wasn't me. I'm me," I said, though from the first hour in this country I'd begun to doubt it.I have Lincoln Smythe's address. He'll put us right. Everything will be arranged promptly, and we'll work out your itinerary."I thought everything was arranged," I said.By the bare bulb hung above our straw beds I saw, far back in John Robertson's eyes, the eternal West African question: What is this guy going on about?Naturally," he said, "but we just have to work out your itinerary."Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything. In fact, for sanity's sake, those two ideas have to be banished: the idea of getting somewhere and the idea of accomplishing something. Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes. So eat, drink, sleep. Everything is arranged.”

“God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end.”

“The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.”

“I had a standing arrangement with God: I'd agree to believe in him—barely—so long as he let me sleep in on Sundays.”

“And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves.Who's turned us round like this, so that we always,do what we may, retain the attitudeof someone who's departing? Just as he,on the last hill, that shows him all his valleyfor the last time, will turn and stop and linger,we live our lives, for ever taking leave.”

“Grab the love. Hold on tight. Treasure it. Put that love you have for your husband first, arrange everything else around it, and all else will work out. Love must be cradled and nurtured and enjoyed and danced with. Never, ever, forget the love. It's why we want to live.Aunt Lydia's character, Julia's Chocolates”

“Almost, I thought. Out loud I said, "Just because we don't see eye to eye on everything doesn't mean we can't be close.Auden”