“One takes what the river offers, both good and bad. The joy of living by running water far outweighs the sorrow.”

“If friendship were a matter of bookkeeping -- so much joy in one column, so much sorrow in the other -- everything would cancel out and you would, it seems, be left with nothing. Yet there must be another factor in the equation, for somehow the joy outweighs the sorrow.”

“..we'll deal with it, because the good outweighs the bad.”

“Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. a”

“Is it possible to take river water back after it has mixed into the sea? The river and the sea are united and one now.”

“Maybe that's what history is, you go from one I can't believe it the next. And sometimes the I can't believe its are good, and sometimes they're bad. But the sum total of positive ones always outweighs the negative ones.”