But sometimes the thing you didn't expect is what you really wanted after all.
It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching.
The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.
Amazing how fire exposes our priorities.
The contents of a man's letters are more valuable than the contents of ms purse.
It’s impossible to repay something that has no price. Some say everything in the world–everything, with no exception–has a price. It’s not true. There are things with no price, things that are priceless. But you realise it belatedly: when you lose them, you lose them forever and nothing can get them back for you.
Jean-Louis Duroc: — Do you know Giacometti, the sculptor?
Anne Gauthier: — Oh, yes. He was handsome.
Jean-Louis Duroc: — Well, he said something extraordinary: "If caught in a fire and I had to choose between a Rembrandt and a cat... I'd save the cat."
Anne Gauthier: — "And then I'd let the cat go."
Jean-Louis Duroc: — Did he say that too?
Anne Gauthier: — That's what's so wonderful.
Jean-Louis Duroc: — Yes, it is. Between art and life, he said he'd choose life.
What have I got? Really? Some money in my pocket. Some nice threads, fancy car at my disposal, and I'm single. Yeah... unattached, free as a bird... I don't depend on nobody. Nobody depends on me. My life's my own. But I don't have peace of mind. And if you don't have that, you've got nothing. So...
A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.