“Look deeply into your disappointments, examine your heartache, interrogate your longing, probe your loneliness, meditate honestly on the elements of love of which you are still ignorant, and you will discover that the void within you is already filled with the desire for fulfillment. Your yearning itself is an internal guidance system that is moving you to become a lover.”
“Then one day I realized that my heart was withering, and in it there was nothing but pain. And that my beliefs, that I once held so passionately, had completely disappeared.”
“That fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, ‘I love you, but I think I love Boris best,’ told on me at last. I had never imagined that it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had deceived myself.”
“Tessa Kelly is a man-eater. She’s like Medusa, but without the whole “freezing to stone” bit. Because that’s not her style. That’s not painful enough for her. She’d much rather draw you in with her blinding beauty, and then rip your heart out and eat it in front of you. And then she’ll stand over you and watch you slowly die at her feet.”
“I guess that means your heart’s so sad that it’s hard to get out from under the weight. Granny used to say grief is the heaviest thing to carry alone.”
“Then, masking the pain in our hearts, we’d put on a smile and ask you, ‘How did the Assembly go today? Any decision about a rider to the peace treaty?’ And my husband would say, ‘What’s that to you? Shut up!’ And I’d shut up.”
“If you haven’t been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.”
“we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another,”
“In her freshman year, too, she had had a heartache over losing the Essay Contest. Every year the two societies into which the school was divided competed for a cup in easy writing.”
When he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and sitting in the twilight, prayed for Beth, with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister.
“I’ll never cry for you again,” said I. Which was, I suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.