And all that you brought upon us

And all that you have done to us,

You have in justice?

Deliver us in your wonderful way.

Song of the Three Children, 7-19

The apocrypha

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

Jonathan Safron Foer

I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

Mary Oliver

"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. I told you that."

--Salman Rushdie

Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

You don't want to come back here. The weather is miserable and everyone is in a bad mood.

It sounded wonderful.

Francesca Marciano. Rules of the Wild

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the root of trees

Is my destroyer

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry flower

Dylan Thomas

Luke, once this winter, brought home the school goldfish, Swimmy, for the weekend. He got up on a chair to stare at this bowl and said hello. No answer. Then he recalled what kind of goldfish it was, "Ca va, Swimmy?" he said at last, "Ca va?"? Speaking the goldfish's language to the goldfish.

Adam Gopnik. Paris to the Moon, 267

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.

~ The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

When you say that you're having an impossible time, what do you mean?

I'm constantly emotional.

Are you emotional right now?

I'm extremely emotional right now.

What emotions are you feeling?

All of them.

Like?

Right now I'm feeling sadness, happiness, anger, love, guilt, joy, shame, and a little bit of humor?

~ Jonathan Safron Foer