“There was always a way, when one knew what one wanted.”

“Strange the workings of the heart. One could go on for years, habituated to loss, reconciled to it, and then, in a moments unwary thought, the pain resurfaced, sharp and raw as a fresh wound.”

“Why, she wondered, do we always reserve our worst hatred for our own?”

“Truly Virgil was right: love was a form of sickness. It altered people, made them behave in strange and irrational ways.”

“What is life? The joy of the blessed, the sorrow of the sad, and a search for death. And what is death? An inevitable happening, an uncertain pilgrimage, the tears of the living, the thief of man.”

“The bud of a rose grows in darkness. It knows nothing of the sun, yet it pushes at the darkness that confines it until at last the walls give way and the rose bursts forth, spreading its petals into the light. I love him.”

“Who was to know what went on in a person's heart? A wise woman kept her own counsel.”