“I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren't happy and never will be.”

“Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.”

“If there is a god, or hundreds of them, I hope they will forgive me for the harm I may have inflicted on you by telling you exactly what happened.”

“In those days, Christmas still retained a certain aura of magic and mystery. The powdery light of winter, the hopeful expressions of people who lived among shadows and silence, lent that setting a slight air of promise in which at least children and those who had learned the art of forgetting could still believe.”

“Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not learned to stifle with words.”

“ I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us. ”

“Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.”