"The Master" Quotes

He had come to understand that it was the ordinary things that made life bearable, the way a child sat on a chair, the way someone picked up a newspaper and folded it, or how a woman spoke quietly to another woman on a bus.

The masters he admired were the ones who seemed to change the world simply by being themselves.

He had always thought of himself as remote from the world, someone who stood back and watched, but in fact, he had allowed himself to be formed by what he had seen and heard.

To live alone, he had discovered, required a certain amount of stoicism, a practical grasp of one's own limitations, and a sense of the importance of keeping busy.

He had no interest in telling his own story. He knew that it was in the stories of others that life became apparent.

He knew that he had learned something about the secret life of people, about the way in which they could be both separate and together, how each one could be so distant and unreachable, and yet also part of the same pattern.

He had changed, he had become something that could not be undone, and he knew that there was a limit to how much he could explain.

He had sought out the company of others, but he had also learned to value solitude.

He had come to understand that words were a way of revealing, but also of hiding, and that there were things that could never be said.

He had discovered that he could not live without a certain amount of sadness, that it was the sadness that made him feel alive.