“Because how could I rest, when the world is so cruel and hard, and yet might be so sweet.”

“It's hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean.”

“How was it possible for the world to be so beautiful and so cruel at the same time?”

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

“How could God be so cruel as to create a Muslim woman with so much flesh and so little sex appeal?”