“This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.”

“What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.”

“All I could think was that right there, in ever passing second, was the future winding itself own. Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.”

“For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.”

“Not his real name, darling, but my own name for him. I never thought it could be like this. I never thought one could be so close, and yet so different to a single human being. He is everything I've never been, and yet I love him more than any person or anything I've ever known.”

“Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.”