“Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.”

(From the poem Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

“I went back and memorized it. Not because I believe it’s true, but so that I have a choice of what to believe, and it doesn’t always have to be the worst.”  ( From “A Trick of the Light” by Louise Penny)

“Now here’s a good one:
you’re lying on your deathbed.
You have one hour to live.
Who is it, exactly, you have needed
all these years to forgive?”

(From “A Trick of the Light” by Louise Penny)