Suddenly I am crushed by the simplicity of it all: he is leaving. - James Salter

I have not forgotten those days, I have only forgotten how simply they seemed to occur …

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?

she was motionless, like an old woman who has lived too long.