“We are born sad and we die sad, but meanwhile we love bodies whose sad beauty is a miracle.”

“She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”

“I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.”

“But we never want to talk about sadness without leaving a scar. We don't even realize that behind the wound inside the oyster's body is a beautiful pearl.”

“It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.”

“It all seems so sad, so unbearably sad for a second, to think of the lovely old maple with the swing. We never told the tree how much we loved it. We never gave it a name, never did anything for it.”

“I only saw her as she pass'd —
A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes
Lay all the loves of Paradise.”

“SADNESSES OF THE COVENANT: Sadness of God's love; Sadness of God's back [sic]; Favorite-child sadness; Sadness of b[ein]g sad in front of one's God; Sadness of the opposite of belief [sic]; What if? Sadness; Sadness of God alone in heaven; Sadness of a God who would need people to pray to Him…”

“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.”

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”