This Week's Trivia--Say Yes To Life

Let's close out the year with a literary quote to identify.  As I've noted here often recently, I've spent much of the month reading and rereading John Irving, but I'm not going to serve up a quote from Owen Meany or Garp or Cider House Rules here.

Irving (or his fictional characters) is constantly recommending works of great novelists who preceded him as he does in spades in his latest novel In One Person.

Here's a great quote from one writer he recommends.  Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the author.

"People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, any more than they can invent their parents.  Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life."

Ah yes, tis a great quote.  It sounds rather Dickensian, but is it?

Here's a choice.  Is it from (and all of these are recommended by Irving)?

A--Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

B--Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

C--Tess of  the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Harty

D--Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

or

E--Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

If it sounds like a quote advocating the right, dare I say the need, to love whosoever you choose, you would be right in thinking it's from the great African American (and gay) novelist James Baldwin whom, by mere coincidence, I quoted (albeit it not this line--I hadn't read Giovanni's Room at the time) in my speech on the House floor in favor of gay marriage a few years ago.

Say yes to Life.

Say yes to Love.