“Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.”

“Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.”

“I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.”

“I'd like to say I found a sublime beauty in it all, but I didn't. And yet. And yet, this life we'd built filled our car”

“They had lied, those who had extolled the virtues of love—its pleasures, its sublimity—those who had told her that it was beautiful and worthwhile.There was nothing beautiful about it.It was awful.”

“...There is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements. ”