“But our lives were not as they seemed, were they, Sophia? No one's life ever is.”

“In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. ”

“People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them any more. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had.”

“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”

“More than anyone I’d ever met, he seemed to participate in life as if it were art, and to practice a studied, careful carefreeness. His sense of what is worthy seemed to overlap very little with any conventional sense of what is useful, and if there were one precept that could be said to govern his life, it is that one’s highest calling is to engage in enriching escapades at every turn.”

“We live our lives afraid of change and if we were to just embrace it instead, it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal when it hits us.”