“How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the first to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death.' In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and her handwriting was elongated, fine, even elegant. (However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction.)”

“When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I stopped to think about my Grandpa writing to my Grandma, knowing how much he loved her and how many years he spent without her after her death, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through just one letter without an onslaught of tears. And it was Grandpa, a voice I knew so well. One that I miss terribly.”

“Her handwriting was curious — small sharp little letters with no capitals (who did she think she was, e. e. cummings?).”

“I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.”

“He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.”

“I went to my grandmother... and asked her to write a letter. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.”