“How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence...p 259”

“Right Understanding means feeling terrible, remembering pain is finite, and taking some solace from that remembering. And, when things are pleasant, even splendidly pleasant, remembering impermanence doesn't diminish the experience--it enhances it [p. 33]”

“Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.”

“Maybe it's because we innately know that everything is impermanent that we so desperately cling to it. But cling we do. We know that our youth vanishes that we and our loved one will die one day, that whatever we have accumulated can easily be taken away from us, that one day our skills might not be wanted, that a day may come when our love might not be reciprocated. But we go on clinging. Everywhere we turn we are faced with impermanence. (..) The more we cling - of course - the more pain we feel as things fade, disappear, die around us.And sometimes the more we cling, the more these things happen. (..) The key to being able to let go of all the stuff you're holding on to is knowing that you'll be okay if you don't have it. And that's the truth. You can survive with very little. And though the passing of people and things can be painful, you will survive.”

“How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence. It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.”

“It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn't control and whose departure you couldn't delay.”