“She expected a lot of me. When I was in fourth grade working on a book report, she made me start the whole thing over when she read it and said it was barely even legible. "What's wrong with it?" I...”

“This is what I'm supposed to be doing this summer. This is how I'm supposed to be passing my days. Figuring out the secret to how she was the most joyful person when she was dying. Because I'm livi...”

“When someone you love has died, there is a certain grace period during which you can get away with murder. Not literal murder, but pretty much anything else.”

“Do you need anything?" she asks. A mom A dad. Someone. Anyone. Can you arrange for that? "Nah, I'm good.”

“Get away from my house and all its rooms that echo, all the rooms I don't enter anymore.”

“I am no longer the left behind. I am the living. And I want everything this life has to offer. I stop for a second and look around at all the shops and stores and stalls. At all the people, going a...”

“When there is a crisis, let your heart pray, but let your hands work.”

“For the briefest moment, Jack's face formed the faintest smile as he considered fear and anxiety, the latter two of which often caused people to forget what truly mattered most.”

“At critical moments the veil between the little-self and the deep self thins and a meaningful self-adjustment becomes possible. If a person does not become paralyzed with fear or frozen in hatred, ...”

“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.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”