“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”

To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn’t like it, but it made it easier to go on.

On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you-you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.

Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.

When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.

I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.

Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn’t what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

People who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.

Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.

I was happy. I loved the night, I loved t so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn’t sleepy at all.

I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

Her eyes were those of someone who’s just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.

As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.

I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.

Remember that an act of love always benefits at least two people.

Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

Maybe this Watergate is like the Old Testament. It was visited upon us and maybe were going to benefit from it.

Pride causes us to use our gifts as though they came from ourselves, not benefits received from God, and to usurp our benefactor’s glory.

It’s not about curing the disease, but healing the life; then the physical benefits come.

You benefit from getting in enough volume at the beginning of your training.

Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

I think most working relationships could benefit by excluding personal matters from the office chatter.