“[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.”

“Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.”

“All the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. Drink it to the dregs. No cheating allowed. No making believe it's not there. Modern man cheats. He tries to get around all the milestones on the road from birth to death.”

“She must jump from square to square, right leg first, then left, then both together, and make a show of caring whether or not she steps on a line. She must go on jumping day after day, bearing the burden of time on her shoulders like a cross that grows heavier from day to day.”

“Before long, unfortunately, she began to be jealous herself, and Tomas saw her jealousy not as a Nobel Prize, but as a burden, a burden he would be saddled with until not long before his death.”

“Just as someone in pain is linked by his groans to the present moment (and is entirely outside past and future), so someone bursting out in such ecstatic laughter is without memory and desire, for he is emitting his shout into the world's present moment and wishes to know only that.”

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”