Shannon: Only the living suffered. Only they were riddled with guilt and regret and unanswered questions.
How do I know you’ll stay? How do I know, if I let myself love you, that one day there wouldn’t be someone else, something else, and you’d just walk away? I can handle being alone now, I know how. But I can’t – I won’t be left again.
Her heart was the one thing she’d always been sure of. Often she imagined of how it would be like to lose it, the thrill and the anxiety of the fall. She’d always wondered who it would be who would make everything inside her yearn. How they would be together – for in her dreams he loved her as well.
Power and privilege will always be attacked by smaller men who claim they have a cause. But the cause is always avarice. Whatever lofty excuse men use for war or revolution, it’s always because they want the power another holds.
She wasn’t the type to sit around ticking off the negatives of her life to see if she could make them outweigh the positives. If something was wrong, something was missing, she acted. Fix the problem and move ahead. Or if the problem couldn’t be fixed, she found the best way to live with it.
You don’t treat your family like this. Like a goddamn convenience.
I don’t know if it helps, but I know when we lost Dad, we were all just numb, I guess. Just taking a step at a time dealing with all the horrible, practical things you have to deal with. Eventually you find yourself in another place. Some of it’s familiar, some of it’s not. You make something else out of it, and you know you couldn’t have without the person you lost.
It’s harsh. There’s enough harsh in the world. I’m going to try a little optimism for a change.
I know how to take care of myself.” “No question. You know how to take care of yourself and everybody else. You don’t know how, apparently, to let someone take care of you. That’s conceit.” She slapped the glass on the counter. “It’s independence and capability.” “To a point, it is. Then it tips over into conceit, and stubbornness.
Love’s the glue. Use it right, it can fix most anything.
It never makes any sense, you know? Being mean never makes any sense.
Marriage is a series of compromises, and at its best, the compromises create a life, a partnership.
Love’s a gift, and can certainly be refused. Refusing doesn’t destroy the gift, it simply puts it aside. You’re free to do that. I’m not expecting a gift in return. Take what’s offered, especially when it’s offered so generously and without expectations.
I think there’s a reason you moved in next door. I think there’s a reason I saw you all those years ago, but didn’t meet you until now. I don’t think I was ready for you until now.
Youth and age, she thought. Beginnings and endings, connections and constancy. And, love.
Life’s a gift. It doesn’t always fit comfortably, but it’s precious. I wouldn’t have hurt you and your brothers by throwing mine away.
Youth and age, she thought. Beginnings and endings, connections and constancy. And, love. She snapped the embrace, but that wasn’t it. She snapped the glitter of tears, and still, no. Then Alison lowered her forehead to her grandmother’s, and even as her lips curved, a single tear slid down her cheek while the dress glowed and glittered behind them. Perfect. The blue butterfly.
Sundays were knowing absolutely nothing had to be done, and countless things could be.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Fire doesn’t only destroy, Rowan. Sometimes it creates. The best of it creates, and when love’s a fire, whether it’s bright or a steady glow, hot or warm, it creates. It makes you better than you were without it.
He didn’t expect to find her. I didn’t expect him to find her. She makes a difference, in him, in the book.