“If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world.”

“That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.”

“She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could feel so much and not die of it. But slowly, cell by painful cell, she began to mend. There came a time when it was no longer her whole body that burned with pain but only her heart. And then there came a time when even her heart was able, for a time at least, to feel other emotions besides grief... she learned how to exist apart.”

“Oh, she's got so in the habit of living she'll never die.”

“She'll soon forget.""Caddy," said Saffron impatiently, "she is headmistress of the private school! She's probably never forgotten anything in her whole life!”

“Everything seemed meaningless to me. All of a sudden. My own life, the lives of others, of animals of plants, the whole world. It no longer fitted together.”