If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?

They had been talking about his friend Z. when she announced, "If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him."Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z. Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of pos­sibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men. We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspir­ing, is playing the "Es muss sein!" to our own great love.Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not "Es muss sein!" (It must be so), but rather "Es konnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise).

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.

Lament invoked love.Woe invoked wonder.Grief invoked grace.Cry invoked celebration.(Page 80)

Three years? That's a thousand tomorrows, ma'am.

There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it__ the endings we__e unprepared for.