“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”

“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”

“If illness didn’t kill you, you died of bad luck.”

“When a man is ill,he has only one wish -to gain health,and when he does -then come a hundred wishes and he turns even unhappier than when he was lying sick in bed”

“One makes their own luck, good or ill... and there are no guesses, merely faulty concentration.”

“All the luck in the world has to come every year, in every part of every year, or there is not a harvest and then the luck, the bad luck will come and everything we are, all that we can ever be, all the Einsteins and babies and love and hate, all the joy and sadness and sex and wanting and liking and disliking, all the soft summer breezes on cheeks and first snowflakes, all the Van Goghs and Rembrandts and Mozarts and Mahlers and Thomas Jeffersons and Lincolns and Ghandis and Jesus Christs, all the Cleopatras and lovemaking and riches and achievements and progress, all of that, every single damn thing that we are or ever will be is dependent on six inches of topsoil and the fact that the rain comes when it's needed and does not come when it is not needed; everything, every...single...thing comes with that luck.”