Susan

“Is growin' up always miserable?" Sonny asked. "Nobody seems to enjoy it much."
"Oh, it ain't necessarily misearble," Sam replied. "About eighty percent of the time, I guess."
They were silent again, Sam the Lion thinking of the lovely, spritely girl he had once led into the water, right there, where they were sitting.
"We ought to go to a real fishin' tank next year," Sam said finally. "It don't do to think about things like that too much. If she were here now I'd probably be crazy again in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous?"
A half-hour later, when they had gathered up the gear and were on the way to town, he answered his own question. "It ain't really, " he said. "Being crazy about a woman like her's always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones is what's ridiculous.”
― Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show

“. . . if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, The Mapping of Love and Death

“Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.”
― Sigrid Undset, The Wife

“And she felt joy bubbling up in her heart—that the world was so full of sunshine and beauty and gladness. And she had put herself outside it, banished herself to her corner. For all that, it was a good thing that it was so good to live—for the others, for all who had not undone themselves. And when at that moment she felt a violent quickening of the child within her, her own heart seemed to stir and answer it—"No, no, I no longer wish you ill...”
― Sigrid Undset, The Axe