“It's been a great gig. In this roistering life there a multitude of partings and meetings-I will look for you along the way-”

“She drove down the street, talking to herself furiously. I loved them too much. God is punishing me for loving people the way I should love God. Something was wrong there, too, that God would punish her, but she could not be bothered to think it through, because she was tired of God. Demand, demand, demand, and never any good to come of it except loneliness and despair, it was all--Enough. She'd had enough of all this. She would have revenge. She would go to movies by herself again, and go out for dinner wherever she wanted, and she would have a tidy house and a little job.”

“It was involvement that put you into time, perhaps.”

“Fear is always with us: that we are not good enough or strong enough, and so will fail; that we will be hurt. Fear that what we love will be taken from us. Fear of dying, even fear of God, or of no God. But God surprises us by giving us strength to bear what we must; by giving us joy when we think that nothing but sadness is possible.”

“Clary knew what made the parents around her cry, more or less openly: that everything must grow and change and--rather than being set free--must die, all these children too. We die, they will die, their children will be dead. We resist mourning, because we know we will have to mourn soon enough, and the resistance makes us weep.”

“Everybody was dying, or already dead, or leaving other people, and the year was dying into winter, and the only thing to do was make some noise.”

“A society that doesn't know any longer how to observe every death with proper rituals, that does not know that death is not the end, but only part of the journey, has lost its way, has had the very heart of its humanity torn out.”