“Friendships are the most important thing you can have in your life. Sometimes they have their ups and downs. Sometimes it's your fault and sometimes it's not. But the key to handling those ups and downs is to remember that good friends will always find their way back to each other.”

“It's a funny thing when someone says something you've been waiting to hear for a good portion of your life. It's like suddenly it doesn't feel like it took so look for them to say it, because in some way you always knew that they meant to and eventually one day they would get around to it.”

“In life, you take strides forward, but you always take a few steps back. But in the end, if you take more steps forward than backward, you're making progress.”

“And where does that minute go, that minute that separates life from death? I want those sixty seconds back.”

“Mattie loves to read. Was born to read. I love to listen to Mattie read. The way her voice rises two octaves above everyone else's. The way the words collide-an endless train of sounds that doesn't require breath.”

“You said, "Ellie, this is the truth, everybody leaves. Everybody." I was just seven, and when I reached for you, you were death and absence and missing take you. You were where bad husbands disappear to. And you were whispering. "Just ask them.”

“I love Lena Horne's "It's not the load that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it."And Annie Dillard"s roughly remembered: Sometimes you have to just jump off the edge and find your wings on the way down.”