Augustine

“I needed to be reminded of mysterious and sacred things,”

"But this is my own maze, she told herself, this is the maze I grew up in; I could not be a prisoner here; I know the way so perfectly, and she turned and was further lost."

“…she would rather, for instance, have been alone in her room with the door locked, or sitting on the grass by a brook at midnight, or, given an absolutely free choice, standing motionless against a pillar in a Greek temple or on a tumbril in Paris or on a great lonely rock over the sea…”

“… a spot where two people have been talking, however briefly, is not after that a spot for one person to sit alone.”

“She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by”