“But with your life you make a few bad decisions, get unlucky a few times, whatever, but you have to keep going, right?”

“There is no advice that I can give you, you will just have to trust yourself that when the time comes, you'll make the right decision.”

“Life is made up of meetings and partings. People come into your life everyday, you say good morning, you say good evening, some stay for a few minutes, some stay for a few months, some a year, others a whole lifetime. No matter who it is, you meet and then you part.”

“Aim for something Rosie, I know you don’t want to hear it, but it willhelp. Aim for what you want and the year will all make sense. Go to Bostonif that will make you happy. Study hotel management like you’ve alwayswanted.You’re only young Rosie, and I know that you absolutely hate to hearthat but it’s true. What seems tragic now won’t even be an issue in a fewlove, rosie 29years time. You’re only 17. You and Alex have the rest of your lives to catchup together . . . After all, soul mates always end up together. Silly Bethanywon’t even be remembered in a few years time. Ex-girlfriends are easily forgotten.Best friends stay with you forever.”

“When something tragic has happened, you'll find that you, the tragicee, become the person that has to make everything comfortable for everyone else....As a tragicee and future divorcee, you'll also find that people will question you on the biggest decisions you've ever made in your life as though you hadn't thought about them at all before – as though, through their twenty questions and dubious faces, they're going to shine light on something that you missed the hundredth time around during your darkest hours.”

“Our life is made up of time; our days are measured in hours, our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a few quick minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?”

“I had a million plans. I knew what I was going to do. I had the next few years of my life all figured out.But what I didn’t know was that within a few hours all those plans would change. Ms. Know-it-all didn’t quite know it all so much then.”