“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”

“Though life has to be lived forward, it can only be understood backwards”

“Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.”

“Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward.”

“There was no justice, there was only life. And life she had.”

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”

“Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”