“I knew that what I had felt was envy or regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved.”

“The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter but he never felt the law.”

“perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost.”

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

“The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I’m left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can’t quite remember.”

“"I don't really know what happened. I just fell out of the nest." But the second Soren said those words he felt a weird queasiness. He almost knew. He just couldn't quite remember, but he almost knew how it had happened, and he felt a mixture of dread and shame creep through him. He felt something terrible deep in his gizzard.”

“I have never had to look up a definition of honor. I knew instinctively what it was. It is something I had the day I was born, and I never had to question where it came from or by what right it was mine. If I was stripped of my honor, I would choose death as certainly and unemotionally as I clean my shoes in the morning. Honor is the presence of God in man.”

“I mean it's wonderful to see that something you have done in your career has attracted so much attention. It was basically giving it what I call a lifetime achievement, it's something people will never forget.”

“I thought inside "I must really be crazy, now — because craziness is where everybody agrees about something — except you!" And yet I felt saner than I had ever felt, so I knew this was a new kind of craziness or perhaps a new kind of saneness.”

“I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.”