“She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.”

“Love me, Love me, I cried to the rocks and the trees, And Love me, they cried again, but it was only to tease. Once I cried Love me to the people, but they fled like a dream, And when I cried Love to my friend, she began to scream. Oh why do they leave me, the beautiful people, and only the rocks remain, To cry Love me, as I cry Love me, and Love me again.”

“And that other self, who watches me from the distance of decades,what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,I whose choices made her what she will be?”

“She breathed in the vast world of suffering and pure, dark love, and as she did, a well of compassion began to flow in her.”

“She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief.”

“She had a wild impulse to seize the stout, good-natured nun by the shoulders and shake her, crying: "Don't you know that I'm a human being, unhappy and alone, and I want comfort and sympathy and encouragement; oh, can't you turn a minute away from God and give me a little compassion; not the Christian compassion that you have for all suffering things, but just human compassion for me?”