“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

“It appears that you were meant to be mine only for a little while.”

“The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.”

“Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.”

“Death doesn't happen instantly. For a little while, you hover around your body, confused. What you want more than anything is to go home, to be safe, to know you're okay. But my life was over.”

“Middle-aged memory [is] an instrument of torture: you reach for the fruit of memory and it vanishes, to appear when you no longer want it.”