Great Unhappiness Is Incompatible With The Belief

There Is Something Worse Than Dying, And That Is Humiliation - At Least So It Seemed To Me.

One Can Be Tired Of Rome After Three Weeks And Feel One Has Exhausted It; After Three Months One Feels That One Has Not Even Scratched The Surface Of Rome; And After Six Months One Wishes Never To Leave It.

There Are Places One Comes Home To That One Has Never Been To.

Every House We Have Lived In, Every Building To Which Our Hands Have Lent Their Work, Belongs To Us By Virtue Of Love Or Of Regret.

Grief Does Not End And Love Does Not Die And Nothing Fills Its Graven Place. With Grace, Pain Is Transmuted Into The Gold Of Wisdom And Compassion And The Lesser Coin Of Muted Sadness And Resignation; But Something Leaden Of It Remains, To Become The Kernel Arond Which More Pain Accretes (a Black Pearl): One Pain Becomes Every Other Pain ... Unless One Strips Away, One By One, The Layers Of Pain To Get To The Heart Of The Pain - And This Causes More Pain, Pain So Intense As To Feel Like Evisceration.