“But the truth enters at the end of life.It enters like oxygen into every celland the madness it feeds there in someis only a lucid metaphorfor something long burned to nothing,like a star.How do you get under your desire?How do you peel away each desirelike ponderous clothes, one at a time,until what's underneath is known?”

“Consider A MoveThe steady time of being unknown,in solitude, without friends,is not a steadiness that sustains.I hear your voice waver on the phone:Haven't talked to anyone for days.I drive around. I sit in parking lots.The voice zeroes through my ear, and waits.What should I say? There are waysto meet people you will want to love?I know of none. You come out strongerhaving gone through this? I no longerbelieve that, if I once did. Consider a move,a change, a job, a new place to live,someplace you'd like to be. That's not it,you say. Now time turns back. We almost touch.Then what is? I ask. What is?”

“There’s a certain worth that can only be given to us by God. You see, if you think about it, worth has nothing to do with the object. Worth has everything to do with how much someone is willing to pay for the object. God paid for each and every one of us with His son’s life. That gives me chills. That makes us worth a lot.”

“And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”

“THIS IS WHYHe will never be given to wonder muchif he was the mouth for some cruel forcethat said it. But if he were(this will comfort her) less than one momentout of millions had he meant it. So many years and so many turnsthey had swerved around the subject.And he will swear for many morethe kitchen and everything in it vanished --the oak table, their guests, the refrigerator doorhe had been surely propped against--all changed to rusted ironwork and ashexcept in the center in her linen caftan:she was not touched.He remembers the silence before he spokeand her nodding a little,as if in the meat of this gray wastehere was the signalfor him to speak what they had long agreed,what somewhere they had prepared together.And this one moment in the desert of ashstretches into forever.They had been having a dinner party.She had been lonely. A friend asked her almost jokingif she had ever felt really crazy,and when she started to unwind her answerin long, lovely sentences like scarves within herhe saw this was the waythey could no longer talk together.And that is when he said it,in front of the guests,because he couldn't bear to hear her.And this is why the guests have leftand she screams as he comes near her. ”

“Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,"Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life.”

“You see, Momo,' he [Beppo Roadsweeper] told her one day, 'it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept.'He gazed silently into space before continuing. 'And then you start to hurry,' he went on. 'You work faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop - and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.'He pondered a while. Then he said, 'You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.'Again he paused for thought before adding, 'That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.'There was another long silence. At last he went on, 'And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. What's more, you aren't out of breath.' He nodded to himself. 'That's important, too,' he concluded.”