If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods.

Empathy was written from many male and female points of view because each character reacts differently to the emotional fallout from one binding circumstance

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of all the trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of whichher beauty was a part.

Reading an author's Biography contributes to an understanding and enjoyment of their work, and gives a richness to the reading experience.