Life After Life

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.

What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.

He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.

Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future.

Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.

No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.

Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.

Sylvie’s knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, ‘The sign that one has acquired one’s learning from reading novels rather than an education…

She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said.

Become such as you are, having learned what that is.

You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.

Why is everything an 'adventure' with you?" Sylvie said irritably to Izzie." "Because life is an adventure, of course." "I would say it was more of an endurance race," Sylvie said. "Or an obstacle course.

We cannot turn away,” Miss Woolf told her, “we must get on with our job and we must bear witness.” What did that mean, Ursula wondered. “It means,” Miss Woolf said, “that we must remember these people when we are safely in the future.” “And if we are killed?” “Then others must remember us.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,” Klara said. “If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness

Pamela, even at a distance, was the voice of her conscience, but then it was very easy to have a conscience from a distance.

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for enough good women to do nothing.

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much.

...but one cannot look backward, only forward. What has passed has passed forever.

Her heart swelled with the high holiness of it all. Imminence was all around. She was both warrior and shining spear. She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.

I think there is something wrong with the human race. It undermines everything one would like to believe in, don't you think?

Kittens were in continual abundance on the farm, there was a kind of kitten currency in the neighborhood, they were bartered for all kinds of emotional regret or fulfillment by parents - a doll lost, an exam passed.

You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.