“Jake: I'm not offering up excuses of any kind... I was just saying that sometimes shit happens, and I don't have a choice.Natalie: No, Jake, that's where you're wrong. Me getting cancer? True enough, I had no choice. How you treat the ones you love? Well, there, you always have a choice.”

“That's the thing," Jo says. "You think you know what you're in for. I mean, you tell yourself that, of course, it's not going to be wine and roses and all of that bullshit for the rest of your life, but then, one day, you wake up, and your fucking husband has morphed into someone whom you barely recognize. And you sit there and you stare at him while he scratches his balls through his underwear at the kitchen table, and you think, 'This is totally not what I signed up for. I mean, who knows if I even love this ball-scratching, foul-breathed man?' And then you wonder if you love him more out of habit than out of anything else." She chews the inside of her lip and considers. "And I guess from there, all bets are off.”

“You have to know... What you have to know in all of this, through all of this, is that no matter how lost you are in this maze of hell and confusion, that in the end, I promise you, you will be found.”

“Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you. These are the things I have seen, these are the things I now know, these are the things I will carry with me as I go.”

“I'd recognized it only recently. I wasn't sure if it was because she had changed or I had, but it didn't really matter. I recognized it just the same... If you just noticed the shiny veneer on the outside, they'd always look perfect. So you had to peer closer, watch them when they didn't think they were being watched. Eventually, you'd notice the dings.”

“There is the before. And then there is the after. Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you. These are the things I have seen, these are the things I now know, these are the things I will carry with me as I go.”

“Nothing is different here and now than it used to be: The people whom I need most are gone, and the ones who remain do nothing to help me get to where I need to go. Different names, different faces, but the end result is still the same.”