“You can't go back. What's done is done. Unrequited love is never easy. Time heals all wounds. I kept repeating such cliches to myself, hoping that they, like medicine, would take away the sting.They didn't.”

“Love is an open wound that you hope never heals.”

“I think about all of the things I've done, Oskar. And all of the things I didn't do. The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.”

“I gulped; I had the overwhelming sensation that what we had done wasn’t enough. I’m not sure what I had expected, maybe a fairy tale endingwhere a magic wand fixed everything, including all the darkness we had been through.But this was no fairy tale. Nothing could bring back the thirty boys that had died. Nothing could take away the grief that had torn their family’shearts into shreds. Experiences like this, I realized, are wounds that never quite healed; they stayed with you and no amount of justice would erasethe scar.”

“When hope dies, you breathe it back to life again! No matter how long it takes, or what time's required to heal the wound. Disappointment will not last a lifetime unless you lie down and give in.”

“But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already… it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”