“Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a person is to have a puppy lick your face.”

“I'll tell you something about tough things. They just about kill you, but if you decide to keep working at them, you'll find the way through. On the Food Network they have these shows where cooks have to put a meal together with all these weird ingredients. That's a lot like my life-dealing with things you wouldn't think ever go together. But a good cook can make the best meal out of the craziest combinations.”

“But then Macon smiled at me. "Just be yourself, Foster. That's the best thing in the world.”

“Sometimes just getting up in the morning and standing at the gate can bring the gate down.”

“The problem with the heart is how it can have so many opposite feelings coursing through it all at the same time. It's really an inconsistent thing- appreciating something one minute and hating it the next. ”

“My father always told me that in this world we are going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy”

“You cannot measure the loss of a human life. It's all the things a person was, all their dreams, all the people who loved them, all they hoped to be and could give back to the world.”