“For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?”

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”

“I’d think there are degrees of greatness,” Adam said.“I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility - that hugeness - you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other?”

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”

“It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.”

“It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.”

“What pillow can one have like a good conscience?”