“To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.”
“fiction is founded on truth... unless things did happen, people couldn't think of them.”
“In my opinion half the people who spend their lives avoiding being run over by buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way. They're no good.”
“It's a rotten job, but somebody's got to do it.”
“It’s odd, isn’t it, why farce so often seems to get mixed up with tragedy?”
“What I think is a different matter. Maybe I think some rather curious things—but until thinking's got you somewhere it's no use talking about it.”
“But nothing will suit him now but the best! He's got on wonderfully, and naturally he wants something to show for it, but many's the time I wonder where it will end.”
“I often find these self-made men are inconsiderate. Very possibly that is why they amass such large fortunes.”
“Bundle frowned. This business of the clocks was curious. She must get hold of Bill Eversleigh. He had been there, she knew. To think was to act with Bundle. She got up and went over to the writing desk. It was an inlaid affair with a lid that rolled back. Bundle sat down at it, pulled a sheet of notepaper towards her and wrote. Dear Bill,—”
“Come and have a cocktail. It's nearly lunch time.”
“I don't like anyone who comes and dies in my house on purpose to annoy me," said Lord Caterham obstinately.”
“I haven’t started counting yet. I wonder if it’s just me or if it’s like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone.”
“We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.”
“There's an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists."
So God just leaves?"
No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering."
Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it."
But the sparrow still falls.”
“Well done, Anne,’ she said, as if her daughter-in-law had won a minor rosette at a regatta. ‘All of us are so very proud of you.”
“The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I Have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving. ”
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