“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”

“She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.”

“Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.”

“You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen”

“Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight to keep it from taking over. ”

“So far, she’d been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction.Lena Kaligaris”

“She couldn’t hide from everyone for the rest of her life… Well she could. That was the direction things were going. But she knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in a real friend could do a world of good.”