“It is possible to grieve for the loss of a thing even as you are in possession of it. To crave the very thing you have been blessed with.”

“She was grieving the loss of her youth, the closing down of possibilities as life became what it was rather than what it might have been.”

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

“ YOU claim you are blessed , YOU claim you have done all the good things and YOU even boast that YOU understand the Bible very well ,... have you not noticed that it was only YOU who say it?.....no wonder it was only YOU who talks and believe in it.”

“How was it even possible to know if your brain was malfunctioning, because the very thing you need to think it all through is the very thing that might be playing up in the first place”

“And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing itagain, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaicrenunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had hepossessed and lost.”