“Grief can put all kinds of regret into focus.”

“Now there's something else I know. You might not think you're grieving, but grief comes in all sorts of ways. There's the kind of grief that leaves you numb, and the kind of grief that rips your world in half. And then there's another kind of grief that doesn't feel like grief at all. Its like a tiny splinter you don't even know you have until it festers so deep it has nowhere left to go but into your soul. I think that's the hardest kind of grief there is because you know you're hurting but you don't know why.”

“The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.”

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

“Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.”

“Let’s take the focus off “fat” and put it on health. Let’s take the focus off “skinny” and put it on good common sense. Let’s take the focus off body image and put it on education, women’s rights, human rights, the economy, baseball cards, anything.”