“Things happen they way they're meant to. There's a pattern and a shape to everything...Nothing happens without a reason...Nothing is impossible...(Page 180).”

“It was good and nothing good is ever lost.”

“It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.”

“I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.”

“Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.”

“She put out her hand and touched his forearm, as she would have touched some piece of porcelain or sculpture, just for the sheer animal pleasure of feeling its shape and curve beneath her fingertips.”

“A ring was the accepted sign of infinity, eternity. If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, she knew it all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. It was a question, which from time to time, caused her some anxiety and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste. But now, it seemed, the question had become irrelevant, and so the answer, whatever it was, was no longer of any importance.”