“The only thing you have to do in this life is die," said Mrs. Pinsky..."everything else is a choice.”

“But the past is long, and the future is short.”

“We were like wanderers in a desert, blessed with a rare downpour, but unable to store the rain.”

“It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.”

“This was the first time I noticed it, the inevitable space between father and man.”

“I could no longer remember the way my mother's eyes looked before the slowing. Had they always been so red around the edges? Surely, those pockets of gray beneath her lower lashes were new. She sti...”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”