“I'm very much to blame for not seeing it before, but who on earth goes about suspecting an impossible outlandish thing like murder? That's something that happens in books, not among people you know.”

“This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.”

“For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.”

“Whether or not belive in Fate comes down to one thing: who you blame when something goes wrong. Do you think it's your fault - that if you'd tried better, worked harder, it wouldn't have happened? Or do you just chalk it up to circumstance?I know poeple who'll hear about the people who died, and will say that it was God's will. I know people who'll say it was bad luck. And then there's my personal favorite: They were just in the wrong place at hte wrong time.Then again, you could say the same thing about me, couldn't you?”

“Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong. ”

“Who's Mrs. Gummidge?''If you're a good girl and get well soon I'll lend you the book.''Oh, somebody in a book! All you people like Nilla and the Cornishes and that man Darcourt seem to live out of books. As if everything was in books!''Well, Schnak, just about everything is in books. No, that's wrong. We recognize in books what we've met in life. But if you'd read a few books you wouldn't have to meet everything as if it had never happened before, and take every blow right on the chin. You'd see a few things coming...”