Chance Quote by Colum McCann

“And yet, in a touching, shrunken way, she was rather pretty - a prettiness marred by her seeing to be precariously balanced on the…

— Truman Capote

“She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It…

— Alexander McCall Smith

“She considered that there were misfortunes of a much greater magnitude than the loss of a ball experienced every day by some part of…

— Jane Austen

“Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry…

— Thomas Hardy

“She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play”

— Thomas Hardy

“It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering.”

— Louise Erdrich

“She had no God to plead to for mercy or luck. It would be true to say she depended instead on human kindness and…

— Deborah Levy

“There were other times when she was so shattered by ideas that she could do nothing worth while; when they trampled over her like…

— Willa Cather

She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized…

— Abraham Verghese

She had turned her back upon them all and no awful fate had overtaken her; instead, she had taken a firm hold upon life…

— Louis Bromfield

“She perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Humans were temporal. They aged and, eventually, died. And while she could have dwelled on her tendency to morbidly fixate on this quality, she…

— Marilyn Brant