“But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.”

“What Dad didn't understand was that no matter how much he hated or feared the future, it was coming, and there was only one way to deal with it: by climbing aboard.”

“Sometimes it didn't matter how much gumption you had. What mattered were the cards you'd been dealt.”

“No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.”

“There was nothing to compare with standing on a ice of land you owned free and clear. No one could push you off it, no one could take it from you, no one could tell you what to do with it.”

“When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”