“Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.”

“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”

“Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world.”

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”

“Even if times got bad, he would never again deny himself the possibility that the future might be happy even if the present was painful. He would allow himself dreams.”

“As to what happened next, it is possible to maintain that the hand of heaven was involved, and also possible to say that when men are desperate no one can stand up to them.”

“I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.”

“Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.”

“It is possible, you know, to drift off to an unknown world and find happiness there. Maybe even more happiness than you've ever known before.”

“The more rigorously criticism historicizes a work of art, in the sense of lodging it in the context of the moment of its production, the less likely it becomes for criticism to be able to explain either its own subsequent interest in the work or the possibility of lay—that is, nonacademic—interest in reading it.”