“The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.”

“Non-possession” does not mean having nothing. It does not mean to live as a penniless beggar. Rather than meaning having nothing, it is the idea of not possessing what we do not need. The more we possess, The more we have attachments.”

“Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.”

“What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love? And why do we become such jerks when we do? We've all been there. You want something, you possess it - and by possessing it, you lose it. ”

“Perhaps it’s that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.”

“His house to me was a child was a heart of happiness. If there is a wonder childhood possesses which makes it forever superior to what shall come after, it is the happy and uncritical love of whatever is happy, place or person, it does not matter which.”