Lila (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

She meant to ask him sometime how praying is different from worrying.

She couldn’t lean her whole weight on any of this when she knew she would have to live on after it.

For a woman being old just means not being young, and all the youth had been worked out of her before it had really even set in.

There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them.

Things happen the way they do. Why was a foolish question. In a song a note follows the one before because it is that song and not another one.

‘Things happen for reasons that are hidden from us, utterly hidden for as long as we think they must proceed from what has come before, our guilt or our deserving, rather than coming to us from a future that God in his freedom offers to us.’

When you’re scalded, touch hurts, it makes no difference if it’s kindly meant.

Company does sort of settle people sometimes. They don’t have to know anything about you except that you’re sitting there.