different paths Quotes

“Was it a bad thing or good? Who can say? Cosimo’s life was so far out of the ordinary, mine so orderly and modest, and yet our childhood was spent together, both of us indifferent to the adults’ obsessions, as we sought pathways different from those trodden by other people.”

“Life is never sure, Harald. Whichever way a man turns, he thinks he might have done better to take the other path.”

“One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.”