That was the Sunday when, as Anna and I parted at the train station, Walenty said the words I never forgot: "Why is she hugging and kissing you as if… - Ida Fink

Our fate suddenly came to a halt and hung there for a moment, suspended over the abyss it had been racing toward, hung there for a few minutes (five? six?) and then, just as suddenly, turned...This was why I had come here, just for that moment at the crossroads, that sudden turn, that circus trick performed by our fate. (p248-9)

Later she used to say: The place where everything almost ended. She meant the long, gray stone building on the circular plaza planted with trees. But why that place? After all, there were other places equally, if not more deserving of that description. And yet, thirty years later, it was that place she went to see, only that one place. (p226)

Standing by the window, she thought: If only a star would fall. She was superstitious; in those days everyone was superstitious, each in a secret, private way. She had a great many personal superstitions, but shooting stars weren't among them--to wish on a shooting star would have seemed too romantic, too impossible. Nevertheless, that evening she thought: If only a star would fall—even though it was already late autumn, and everybody knows that stars fall only in summer. Still, she kept her eyes stubbornly fixed on the heavens and suddenly saw a flash of light on the horizon: some careless person had turned on a lamp without first covering the window. This flash in the darkness was not the star she was waiting for, but it could have been, and she took it as a good omen. (first lines)