“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”

“Man must be capable of doing evil so that he may respect himself.”

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will ‘lessen as time passes,’ but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within — from our own perceptions.