“You can tell about people by their absences. By the shape of the emptiness they leave behind.”

“Sometimes you can only feel something by its absence. By the empty spaces it leaves behind.”

“I'm going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. I'm going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges.”

“An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence”

“When you miss someone, they leave a person-shaped hole behind in the world that nothing can ever fill. If you don't keep thinking about them, the edges of the hole shrink and fade. You can't let go or the last of them disappears.”

“It is grievous for a man to leave behind him a shadow in his own shape.”