“Bravery is not the absence of fear but the forging ahead despite being afraid”

“He lowered his eyes to his dad's face. There was fear there. Fear. When your dad was frightened, there was something to be frightened about.”

“Knowledge was like candy: you never turned it down, especially if you didn't have to work too hard to get it.”

“Nothing but trees.”

“Live to fight another day was an expression that did not take nto account the loved one who would die because you didn't continue fighting today.”

“Xander could sense more than David's smile. He wished he could be more like that, easygoing. But then, David hadn't seen what Xander had seen.”

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”

“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away a...”

“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of makin...”