Quotes About Mystery

The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we're going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don't see coming, and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.

And from that moment of his introduction to my cousins, I would frequently consider the issue of exactly how human Owen Meany was; there is no doubt that, in the dazzling configurations of the sun that poured through the attic skylight, he looked like a descending angel—a tiny but fiery god, sent to adjudicate the errors of our ways.

worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales. Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth?

And you wouldn't want to bring her home—at least not to entertain your guests or amuse the children. No, Juan Diego thought—you would want to keep her, all for yourself.

never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games.

You're the biggest secret I know...The only way I know what's going on with you is the only way everyone else knows it. I just have to wait and read your next book.

William was quite the hand at Couperin's Messe pour les couvents, too, and Alice had been right about the Christmas section from Handel's Messiah. As for the seduced parishioner, the military man's young wife, Jack's mother told him little—only enough that the boy assumed his father hadn't been asked to leave Kastelskirken for flubbing a refrain.

Pour Juan Diego, des morts ou des fantômes auraient dû avoir une toute autre attitude, surtout dans une église. Que venaient-ils chercher ? Ne connaissaient-ils pas les réponses désormais ?

Nowadays, of course, with the precautionary tests they take—especially with a woman Franny's age—they already know the sex of the child; or someone knows. Not Franny—she didn't want to know. Who wants to know such things in advance? Who doesn't know that half of pleasure lies in the wonder of anticipation?

This is a real-life story, Owen," I said. "It's not a mystery novel." In real life, I meant, there was nothing written that the missing father couldn't

We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen's weightlessness; they were the forces we didn't have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands. O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

What makes the first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany such a good one is that the whole novel is contained in it.

You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.)

Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried.

Some unexplainable things are real.

The Harry Lime Theme"—

The Third Man Theme

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.

Hello, there," he said, in an accent she couldn't place.

He stepped over to Vidian and turned the man's head. There, in his left ear, he saw a small dataport. A moment's revulsion struck and passed. "All right," he said. "Who wants to download Vidian's brain?

There's no one around to answer all my questions now that Ben's gone. It's a stark fact that continually reasserts itself each time I wonder what I'm supposed to do now. That brown robe he wore might as well have been made of pure mystery; he clothed himself in it and then left nothing else behind on the Death Star. I

All this had happened since Ben's arrival from... where? She still didn't know. Unbelievable.

I still don't know how to work out a poem. A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.

I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you.