Jamie Ford

“Loyalty. We're still loyal to the United States of America. Why? Because we too are Americans. We don't agree, but we will show our loyalty by our obedience.”

“The more Henry though about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten.”

“Mentre ascolti questo disco, spero che ripenserai non alle cose brutte, ma alle belle. A ciò che è stato, non a quello che avrebbe potuto essere. Al tempo che trascoremmo insieme, non a quello in cui fummo separati.”

“Feelings can only be hidden so long from those who really pay attention. page 141”

“After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.”

“I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is--it just matters that it feels like home.”

“Henry looked up and down the empty avenue—no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty—the way he felt inside. There was no one left.”

“-Kuinka kauan sinä odotat minua?-Niin kauan kuin on tarvis. En välitä siitä mitä isäni sanoo.-Entä jos joudun olemaan täällä, kunnes tulen vanhaksi ja hiukseni harmaantuvat?-Sitten tuon sinulle kävelykepin”

“At least we have the record, Henry thought. A reminder of a place where people didn't seem to care what you looked like, where you were born, or where your family was from. When the music played, it didn't seem to make one lick of difference if your last was Abernathy or Anjoy, Kung or Kobayashi.”

“A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.”

“There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley’s Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime.”

“I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”

“Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.”

“Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person.”

“Talking to strangers sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in- in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he'd buried Ethel.”

“From character Henry Lee in the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, " He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about". Love it!”

“He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”

“Hope can get you through anything.”

“The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.”

“So Henry found himself stepping off the bus three stops early and wandering over to the Panama Hotel, a place between worlds when he was a child, a place between times now that he was a grown man.”

“...the mechanics of dying...”

“Like so many things Henry had wanted in life -- like his father, his marriage, his life -- it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in.”

“I try not to live in the past...but...sometimes the past lives in me”

“But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.”

“Some things just can't be put back together. Some things can never be fixed. Two broken pieces can't make a lot of anything anymore. But at least he had the broken pieces.”

“He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.”