“When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.”

“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters ...”

“It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable...What ...”

“Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.”

“And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowin...”

“There are parts of a womans heart that are reserved for certain types of love. Experiencing the love of a father figure in an appropriate way is essential in paving the way for the love of a man to...”

“You may think that hiding your pain from sight is somehow going to make it disappear. I can tell you from experience that it isnt. It is just like the time as a kid when you really didnt want to ea...”

“My dear sister, you cant escape God, and you cant escape your skeletons in the closet. They will always be there until you take them out from behind those dusty old moth-eaten coats. Your exterior ...”

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didnt understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can...”

“Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing I could never have him.”

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”