“What makes me liable to great calamity is my having the body (which I call myself); if I had not the body, what great calamity could come to me?”

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

“What happened?" he asked brusquely, interrupting me. "What do you mean, what happened?""I sensed your fear, heard you call out my name.""I...no, I didn't." Stone Wall, I told myself. Great Wall of China, around my thoughts."The Great Wall of China isn't going to do it, Violet. Come on, tell me what happened.”

“Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.”

“I call on those that call me son,Grandson, or great-grandson,On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,To judge what I have done.Have I, that put it into words,Spoilt what old loins have sent?”

“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”