“And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.”

“Fred Astaire. Not a handsome man. He said himself he couldn’t sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs, with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures. When you saw Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth, from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That’s the gospel truth. St Fred. Fred the Redeemer.”

“It is worthless talking about what we have been spared by death. Death grins at that I am sure. Death of all creation knows the value of life.”

“It is always worth itemizing happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers of happiness while you can.”

“It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.”

“It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.”

“To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of the sorrow. You have climbed it.And I notice again in the writing of this confession that there is nothing called long-ago after all. When things are summoned up, it is all present time, pure and simple. So that, much to my surprise, people I have loved are allowed to live again. What it is that allows them I don’t know. I have been happy now and then in the last two weeks, the special happiness that is offered from the hand of sorrow.”