“This is not a love story. It is my life, and as such, there is love, loss, war, death, and sacrifice. It's about things that needed to be done and choices made. I regret nothing.”

“Fuck the past. It's over and done with. The trophies. The fashion. The fights. The abuse. The hate. The love. The wars. The losses. The regrets. The lessons. None of it matters anymore. Because that was yesterday. So what have you done today to make a better life for yourself?”

“But love isn't just about feeling good. It's about doing what you don't want to do, over and over again, if it needs to be done, for the sake of someone else. Love is really about self-sacrifice.”

“Regrets are the last words you speak to your loved ones when you die and the one thing we all fear when we live. I'd rather regret the things I've done and said than regret the things I haven't done or said. It is all the experiences and people you missed out on in life that you will feel the most regretful for in the end. God will forgive you of your mistakes, but there is nothing to forgive if you have never even tried, done or said anything that made a difference in your life or others.”

“...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.”

“Staring at the wreckage of the life we could have had, I knew it wasn't about love or Shay or the Searchers now. It was about sacrifice and redemption, loss that could have new meaning.”