Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes translated by Tom Lathrop

 It started as a conversation between my husband and I. We both hold master's degrees and are avid readers. "Have you every read Don Quixote?"

"No. That's sad since there are so many literary references to it." And just like that the first book of our "book club" was chosen. A little research lead us to choosing Tom Lathrop's translation. We both found it very readable and personally I liked the style of his footnotes, where he often speaks directly to the reader.

It is quite a read for someone with a full time job. I found I had to take breaks, alternating between "Don" and other books I was in the process of reading.  Sometimes work kept me away for a week. It ended up taking me approximately four months to finish. My husband read it faster, but he is a faster reader than I am.

All that being said, I am glad I read it and would recommend it. Here are a few passages that stood out to me:

"...,"responded Sancho, "... And it sometimes happens that you look for one thing and find another. ...." p. 124 

"... Oh, Dulcinea del Toboso, day of my night, glory of my grief, Polaris of my travels, star of my fortune - consider the place and condition to which your absence has brought me, and be moved to some favor commensurate with my deserving loyalty! ..." p. 217

    What offended me the most was his saying that I'm old and maimed, as if I had it in my power to stop time, and as though my maimed arm was a result of some tavern brawl rather than from the noblest battle any age ever witnessed, or that current and future ages will ever witness. If my wounds don't seem resplendent in the eyes of the man on the street, they're revered at least by those who know where they came from, since the soldier looks better dead in battle than free in flight. I'm so convinced of this that if the impossible were offered to me right now - that I could be free from my wounds by not having participated in that battle - I would refuse. Wounds that a soldier has on his face or chest are the stars that guide others to the heaven of honor and to the thirst for earned praise. Also bear in mine that you don't write with gray hairs, but rather with your intellect, which only gets better with the passage of time. p.508

    To all this don Quixote responded: "Children, senor, are part and parcel of the bowels of their parents, thus they are to be loved, no matter how good or bad they are, as much as we love our life-giving souls. The job of the parents is to guide them from when they're small, along the path of virtue, good upbringing, and good Christian customs, so that when they grow up, they can be a comfort to the old age of their parents and a glory to their descendants. And insofar as forcing them to study this or that science, I don't believe it's a good idea, although trying to persuade them seems harmless enough. And if they don't study with an aim to pane lucrand ["to earn a living" in Latin], when the student is lucky enough for heaven to have given him parents who will permit it, I'd be of the opinion that they should allow him to study anything that they see he's most inclined to, and although poetry is less useful than pleasure-giving, it isn't among those pursuits that will dishonor the person who possesses them. p.620

[don Quixote] ... I also say that the natural poet who makes use of art will be better than and will surpass the poet who strives to be one through art alone. The reason is that art doesn't surpass nature; it just perfects it, and when nature is combined with art, and art with nature, they will bring out the most perfect poet. p.622

[Sancho] ... She must have been cruelly wounded and pierced by Cupid, whom they say is a little blind boy who, even if he's a bit bleary-eyed, or even completely blind, when he takes aim at a heart, no matter how small it is, he hits it straight on and splits it in two with his arrows. p.926

[Sancho] ... "I've also heard that the first and principal thing that arouses love is beauty, and since your grace has none at all, I don't see what the poor thing fell in love with."

    "Listen, Sancho," responded do Quixote, " there are two types of beauty - one is of the soul and the other is of the body. The beauty of the soul flourishes and is seen through one's intellect, in one's chastity, good behavior, generosity, and good upbringing, and all of these traits can be found in an ugly man; and with this sort of beauty - and not the beauty of the body - love can arise with great suddenness and force. ..." p.927

[don Quixote] said, "Books like these, although there are many of them, are those that should be printed, because many sinners can profit from them, and an infinite number of lights are necessary for so many unenlightened people." p. 966

    "Look, Sancho," said don Quixote, "there's a great difference between deeds on does for love and those done out of gratitude. ..." p.990

    "I don't understand any of that," replied Sancho. "I only understand that while I'm sleeping, I have no fear, no hopes, no work, no glory. Blessed be the person who invented sleep, the cloak that covers all human thoughts, the food that takes away hunger, water that drives away thirst, fire that warms you when you're cold, coolness that tempers heat, and finally, the money with which all things are bought, the scale that makes the shepherd equal to the king and the fool to the wise man.. There's only one thing bad about sleep, the way I hear it, and that is that it's like death, because there's not much difference between a sleeping man and a dead one." p. 996

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

It sounds depressing, doesn't it. Yet somehow even though you know you are reading about cancer and you know how the book will end, it is inspiring. I felt the same way when I read Elie Wiesel's Night. As the mother of two sons, I loved reading about the bond between mother and son. It seemed to deepen as the book as the book went on, with acknowledged differences and deeper understanding.
Just a few parts I want to note:

     "That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves."
     Mom went on to tell me, as we sat there, that she really believed your personal life was personal. Secrets, she felt, rarely explained or excused anything in real life, or were even all that interesting. People shared too much, she said, not too little. She thought you should be able to keep your private life private for any reason or for no reason. She even felt that way about politicians - so long as they weren't hypocrites - and worried we'd never find enough good and interesting people to run for office if we pried into every corner of their past. p.58

And I'm also talking about kindness, not just about being nice. You can be gruff or abrupt and still be kind. Kindness has much more to do with what you do than how you do it. p. 110

And yet how many more chances would I have to thank her for what she'd done for me and taught me and given me?
     What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn't what you give in exchange for something; it's what you feel when you are blessed - blessed to have a family and friends who care about you, and want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking. p.211

     It's almost taken for granted now that people - children especially - should be encouraged to create, and one obvious benefits to mankind brought about by the Internet is that it has opened up worlds of creativity. Mom certainly appreciated that. But she also was content not to make things but just enjoy them.
     "Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself  by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything." p.293

Oh the Glory of it All by Sean Wilsey

I'm suffering from a bit of a book hangover - from a memoir no less!

I just finished Sean Wilsey's "Oh the Glory of it All" and my thoughts immediately went back to Sean's mother's memoir. I went back to review it first on Goodreads and wrote this:

I just finished Sean Wilsey's "Oh the Glory of it All", which has made me come back to this book and write a brief summary of my impressions. I read this book 3 year ago. Some one gave me the book, saying she couldn't think of anyone else who would want to read it. Hmmm.... Anyway, I started reading with no prior knowledge of the people or events in the memoir. As I was reading, I felt like a looky-loo driving by a horrible car accident. Some parts were so difficult to read. I wanted to scream at these people! I remembering googling the people in the book to find out who they were and having a difficult time putting down the book because I wanted to find out how it all came to an end.  I'm glad I read Pat's memoir because it led me to Sean's, which I loved. Sean's was actually published first. If you read one, you need to read both. If you love to read memoirs, these are great to read together and would make for great book club discussions.

Then I went on to review Sean's memoir:

Oddly enough it is almost 3 years to the day that I finished the memoir "Oh the Hell of It All" by Pat Montandon, Sean's mother, which led me to this book. "Oh the Glory of it All" is Sean's memoir covering the same time period and was actually published first. And of course, it is Sean's story. I have stated that I only give 5 stars to books I would reread, and truthfully I probably won't reread this one. But Sean's ability to bare his soul and emotions relating his truly heartbreaking childhood and then show such astute reflection and insight at the end, makes this memoir worthy of 5 stars. So many parts of this book are hard to read, just like his mother's memoir, but I found myself wanting to know how he became who he is today. If you have read "Oh the Hell of it All" or Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius" you need to read this book. If you haven't read Dave Eggers' memoir, I highly recommend it.

So as with all the books I write about in this blog, I am always struck by certain passages that speak to me in some ways. Here they are:

     Kids are trusting and wise and I cannot think of a less useful combination to be born with. The wisdom lets children know who they are. And then the trust lets everyone else take that knowledge away.  p.443

     It's funny how easy it is to take things away from children. It only takes desire. So easy - to confuse and make kids bad, to hurt and get them lost. It is a snap for even the weakest, dullest adult. Kids have no power. Only emotions. Though everyone remembers the power of their childish emotions so well. They echo on through your whole life. Down a corridor until you arrive at a room full of them. They can push you far, far into your life before you are even aware of them, let alone reconsider them.
     Which raises the question: If parents have absolute power over children, how can that not corrupt?
     And yet there was something childlike about Mom and Dad - even as they destroyed my childhood. p.444

     I feel as all deep mourners must feel when they grieved for a loved one and all they want to do is keep them in their heart and someone wants to talk about something fucking else. p.446

     The writing had to stop. Maybe it's possible to put things in the past by leaving them there. p.449

     And that's when I realized I was done with this book.
     At a certain point research is no different from running. I had done plenty of both. Eventually you've got to stop, make a leap, and leave the ground behind. p.475

     I'd made peace with Mom and Dad. I'd never make peace with Dede. But there was a peace in knowing that. And in knowing who I was.
     A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are.
     This one started as the story of Amity. .....To write about Amity I had to go back to Cascade, Woodhall, St. Mark's. In each case I was received with a kindness that did not exist when I'd been a student. Was this me changing or them changing? With this question came the realization that I wasn't really writing a book about schools. I kept saying I was, because it seemed like the simplest explanation, and I couldn't stand the word "memoir" - a word that made people look at me dubiously and say, "Aren't you a little young?" (though I wasn't) - but I wasn't. This book has been about identity. Identity is the theme. Knowing who you are. My relationship with everyone in this book changed and evolved. And I'm grateful to everyone in this book ...... for making me who I am. That's why I thanked Dad in his coffin. That's why I've dedicated this book to my mother. Dad and Mom and Dede all shaped and played with my identity. Dad knew who he was in business and in the helicopter. Mom knew who she was when telling a story, giving a gift, or dazzling an audience. Dede, I have failed to understand. As a child I was tricked into loving her, and as a teenager I wanted to stick my fingers between her legs and rip her open like a fortune cookie. I don't know what I thought that fortune would have said. But it took the unlikely combination of the three of them - mother, father, stepmother - to make me who I am.
     If the three of them hadn't been so consistently themselves, it might have turned out otherwise. This book might have been unwritten, and I might be living in the beautiful city where I grew up......
     This book is the identity I've made - a better shot at salvation that trying to fix my father's mistakes. Though the decision was made for me.
     I can't wait to write about something besides myself.

     I hope my son has a life of his own.  p.476

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

This is a great character driven novel.

He wanted the children to remain uncomplicated with each other, though he knew it was futile. Parenting adults wasn't at all like parenting kids, when the whole merry band was inclined to believe you, just because. p. 42

All four Posts held their breath simultaneously, each wishing for the moment to last. Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. Even the poor souls who had children in an attempt to rescue a dying marriage were doing so out of a misguided hopefulness. p.269

There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self so many years ago, and to make the same decision. Marriages, like ships, needed steering, and steady hands at the wheel. p. 292

The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert Dejong

This Newberry Honor book is definitely dated. It was written in 1956. Today's students would probably find it hard to read and relate to. I enjoyed it. As a bonus it has pictures by Maurice Sendak.

     "But would my mother and father still be in such a town of battle?"
     The guerrilla smiled a thin smile. "If I know a father, he will wait until the last moment in the small hope that you may return. And if I know a mother, she will wait until the Japanese are in the streets and their bayonets at her back before she gives up a first born son." p. 104

There sat the lieutenant half turned, and he did not understand what his mother said. Ah, but he did understand. He understood! The heart understands without words.  p. 189

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

If you treat every question like you've never heard it before, your students feel like you respect them and everyone learns a lot more. Including the teacher. p.120

When a shy person smiles, it's like the sun coming out. p. 149

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This is the first book I have read written in epistolary form. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was fascinated how the authors brought to light the nuances of each character through the letters they wrote.

I find these passages from the book so true:

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true. p. 10

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment. p.12

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

This was a fascinating read. Mary S. Lovell succeeds in making history very readable. It is informative and was a pleasure to read. Lovell's style of writing makes me want to read more of her biographies. I felt like the following quote sums up much of what comes through in this account of one family.

"Children sometimes appear to believe that parents have an inbuilt guide to perfect parenting and that an inability to deliver what they want or need is a deliberate act of neglect. But parenting is a hit-and-miss affair, depending on many ingredients: the age of the parents, the relationship between them, the behavior of their own parents towards them and their reaction to it, and also the demeanour of the child. Parents, too, apparently often have an inbuilt confidence that their children, given the same upbringing they themselves received, will grow up with the same values and beliefs. But there is no magic formula to good parenting and parents get only one crack at it with each child. They cannot rehearse and go back, learning from past mistakes if they get it wrong. Invariably, too, children grow up with a ragbag of selective memories." p. 61

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

I love the way Patchett writes. Her novels always have layers that peel away as the story progresses. She is not afraid to leave some unanswered questions at the end that make you think and draw your own conclusions. And as you read, you are making discoveries along with the characters.
A few passages that made me think:

... and Marina would have to work very hard not to roll her eyes because her mother had explained that eye-rolling was the height of rudeness and was never an appropriate response, even to very stupid questions. p. 35

     "I never say it to them," she said, looking towards the slightly open pantry door in the direction of her boys and their television, "that I'm not sure he's dead. I know they need to have one answer, even if it's the worst answer you could think of. Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it. Everybody thinks I'm a train wreck because Anders is dead but it's really so much worse than that. I'm still hoping that this Dr. Swenson, for some reason I couldn't possibly put together, has lied about everything, that she's keeping him, or she's lost him somewhere."  p. 43

.... But Marina had been a very good student and a very good doctor and a very good employee and lover and friend and when someone asked her to do something she operated on the principle they had asked because it was important. She succeeded in life because she had so rarely declined any request made of her, how would the Amazon be different? p. 47

.... - she found herself siding with Alan because there was much in his single-minded devotion to a mentor that sounded a familiar note. In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant. p. 233

     There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it. Karen Eckman had wanted Marina to go to Brazil to find out what had happened to her husband, but now that she was here she understood what Dr. Swenson had told her in the restaurant that first night after the opera: it could have been anything, any fever, any bite. It never was remarkable that Anders had died; the remarkable thing was that the rest of them were managing to live in a place for which they were so fundamentally unsuited. Karen had wanted to believe that knowing what Anders had died of and where he was buried would make a difference, but it wouldn't and it didn't. p.269

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

I believe great people do things before they are ready. Loc 128

Shame.....also keeps us from true happiness. An apology is a glorious release. Loc 962

Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.
Loc 1158

It's easier to be brave when you're not alone.
We were young and foolish and didn't know what we were up against. Loc 1259

I am a moon junkie. Every time I look at the moon, I feel less alone and less afraid. I tell my boys that moonlight is a magic blanket and the stars above us are campfires set by friendly aliens. I track lunar cycles....and take my kids outside at night when a moon is new or full or blue. We call this "moon hunting" and we bring flashlights and moon candy along. Loc 3073

When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you..... Your heart becomes a room with-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future... And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it. Loc 3122

A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own. Loc 3237

The Great Gift of Reading Aloud by Meghan Cox Gurdon

Another Wall Street Journal article from the Saturday/Sunday, July 11-12, 2015 edition. This one really hit home from many years of reading aloud to my boys. My picks from the article:

I had, incredibly,  just been permitted to leave a Tokyo hospital with our first born, a daughter. .....
     .....I carried the infant to the little room we had prepared for her, sat down in the rocking chair that I had painted before her arrival, and began to read aloud from a book of fairy tales.
     "Long ago there lived a widower who had one daughter," I informed the pudding in my arms.

     My shining role model Lisa [Wolfinger], the vanishing hostess - and as it happens, a film producer and thus no reflexive enemy of the screen - notes: "Creating that world in your head is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Kids now are being spoon-fed the visual storytelling, so there's no reason for them to close their eyes and imagine a world, imagine what these people would look like, the clothes and smells and landscape."

     Wait, I hear an irritated chorus say, what's so bad about the iPad? What about all those zippy interactive storybooks that tiny kids can "read" to themselves? And what about audio books - are they bad too? IPads and audio books have their virtues, but they don't have warm arms, they can't share a joke, and they haven't any knowledge of, or interest in, a particular child. In the case of recorded stories, they can't answer questions or observe a child's puzzlement and know to pause and explain what, say, a "charabanc" is.

How I Found My Future in a Marrakesh Bazaar by Patricia Storace

I don't usually write a post about a newspaper article, but I read this article in the Wall Street Journal and it struck me. Now I want to read some more that Storace has written. Here is what struck me in this article:

     I saw it immediately, propped up against a dressing table - an intricately carved door whose rich, nocturnally dark wood was studded with stars that I would soon learn were formed of brass, camel bone and silver, and which seemed to pulse and shimmer as my eyes moved over them. ...... No matter how long I stared at it, I found more to see.

     "Why don't you take the door?" he asked. It seemed to be a genuine question, gently posed, not the opening of a subtly aggressive sales pitch. It had never occurred to me that I could buy it. I lived in an already crowded studio apartment and, though I often dreamed of doing so, had no prospect of moving. "I'm afraid I have no place for it," I said, apologetic that I had kept him in the shop for so long. "I don't have a house."
     "Don't be afraid," he told me. "A door is the beginning of a house."

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

What could not be mended must be lived with,.... Loc 102181

Quick words make long troubles. Loc 104115

"Min, I'd say she is as pretty as you, but how can you compare two sunrises?" Loc 105795

Loc refer to the e-reader version of The Complete Wheel of Time

The Sparrow And His Four Children by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Little birds have to encounter great dangers!

Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

There was a saying in the Borderlands: "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather." Once you had that mountain firmly on your shoulders, there was no way to put it down. There was no one else to carry it anyway, and no use whining about it. Loc 82141

"Women do not become exhausted," Haman said, "they only exhaust others. that is a very old saying among us." [Ogier] Loc. 85480

   "When you wish for so long that you could hear something," he said slowly, "and then suddenly, with no warning, you do, it is like a lightening strike and rain on parched ground at the same time. You're stunned, but you cannot hear enough." Loc 86564

 Loc refer to the e-reader version of The Complete Wheel of Time

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

This book made a great book club read and it was a lot more thought provoking than I thought after immediately finishing it. The more I thought about it, the more layers I saw. It made for great discussion. But only a few quotes really stood out, which is not a bad thing. Sometimes it takes only one to make a book. Here are the standouts for me:

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. p.51

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. p. 119

"I don't know what's right," I said, though I did. I knew exactly what I had to do. It was what I'd had to do so many times now: choose the best of two horrible things. page 160

I couldn't make them understand why I'd had to smash things up. But you seemed so happy was all they could say. And it was true: we had seemed that way. Just as I'd seemed to be doing okay after my mom died. Grief doesn't have a face. p.212

     There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take a course.   ....He [stepfather] hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered. p.304

Keep Me Safe by Maya Banks

Defeat was simply the absence of hope and she needed that more now than ever before. p.59


"...while our actions and words may speak differently, the soul is unchangeable. It remains constant.  ..." p. 65

Blood Magick by Nora Roberts

"You're mine, and I am yours. All that you are, I'll take. All that I am, I'll give. I'll be with you,....through fire and flood, through joy and grief, through battle and through peace. Look in my heart, for you have that power. Look in me, and know love." p. 6


"A distance in space means nothing. We are always together." p. 14

kira-kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Sometimes it seemed that one way or another, no matter what my father was saying, he was talking about us. He was talking about all the things he could do for us-and, more often, all the things he could not.  Page 157


Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley.  I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived.  Page 205


He would accept anything and anyone, so long as he could earn a living to help his family. But I saw that on this one day, for the first time since I'd known him, he could not accept the way his life was turning out.  page 210


I had loved tacos the one time I ate them. But it was weird to eat them now, in my saddest moment.  Page 213


Here is a special memory about my sister, Lynn. One day in Iowa there was a strong wind, the kind of wind that seems to go up and down and back and forth. I could hardly see because my hair was blowing around my face. Some of the corn blew almost flat. Lynn and I climbed on a ladder to the top of the roof with two boxes of Kleenex. She said to take the Kleenex out one at a time and let the wind catch it. In a few minutes hundreds of tissues sailed over the cornfield. I held the hair out of my eyes to watch. The tissues looked like giant butterflies.
     Later we got in trouble, and our allowance was docked for the price of the Kleenex. We had to go and pick up every single piece. It was worth it to see the butterflies flying over the corn.
     Lynn could take a simple, everyday object like a box of Kleenex and use it to prove how amazing the world is. She could prove this in many different ways, with Kleenex or soap bubbles or maybe even a blade of grass. This is the main theme of my sister's life. Page 223


My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic. Page 244

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

     "He is only trying to find his way," Lan said suddenly. "No man likes to run forward blindly when he knows there is a cliff somewhere ahead." Page 89


"....My mother says men are different from us. She says we want to be in love, but only with the one we want; a man needs to be in love, but he will love the first woman to tie a string to his heart."  page 129


"I expect you will not lack for company after I go. Just remember that some women see a man with their hearts, while others see no more than a bauble to wear, no different than a necklace or a bracelet. Remember that I will come back, and I am on who sees with her heart." page 153


...Why was it women could go to pieces or fly into a rage at the smallest thing, yet never flicker an eyelash at what left you gaping? page 156


"...Change comes like an avalanche whether we want it or not." page 380


"...Life is uncertainty and struggle, choice and change...Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change." page 386


"...If you plan for the worst, all surprises are pleasant." page 459


"... The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him." page 687


"...Men have thrown their hearts and fortunes at the feet of women who danced the sa'sara. If Mother suspected I knew it- " Her teeth clicked shut as though she had said too much, and her head whipped back to face forward; scarlet mortification covered her from dark hair down to the neck of her dress.
     "Then there isn't any reason for you to dance it," he said quietly. "My heart and fortune, such as they are, already lie at your feet." page 702


"Men don't really change that much, only grow taller." page 721


-but most of the time he simply inquired what the questioner thought was a good solution and told him to do that. It was seldom he really had to come up with an answer; people knew what to do, they just had this fool notion they had to ask him. page 738


     "Free men can have a need to follow someone, too," she said gently. "Most men want to believe in something larger than themselves, something wider than their own fields. That is why there are nations, Perrin, and peoples...." page 741


... In stories, things always happened as the hero planned, seemingly when he wanted them to happen. In real life it rarely occurred that way, even for a ta'veren with prophecy supposedly working for him. In real life it was scratch and hope, and luck if you found more than half a loaf where you needed a whole. page 827


Perrin's hands trembled as he cupped hers.
     "I, Perrin Aybarra, do pledge you my love, Faile Bashere, for as long as I live." For as long as I live and after. "What I possess is this world I give to you." A horse, an axe, a bow. A hammer. Not much to gift a bride. I give you life, my love. It's all I have. "I will keep and hold you, succor and tend you, protect and shelter, for all the days of my life." I can't keep you; the only way I can protect you is to send you away. "I am yours, always and forever." By the time he finished, his hands were shaking visibly. page 907