“I would come to learn that the alpha female can read every single bit of food you put into your body. Make a choice that'a going to keep you strong and fit for the pack and you will pass muster; make a choice that's the equivalent of chocolate cake in the human world and you'll wind up urinating in streams to disguise your scent, or else suffer the consequences.”

“There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.”

“Let me tell you what you feel like when you know you are ready to die.You sleep a lot, and when you wake up the very first thought in your head is that you wish you could go back to bed.You go entire days without eating, because food is a commodity that keeps you here.You read the same page a hundred times.You rewind your life like a videocassette and see the things that make you weep, things that make you pause, but nothing that makes you want to play it forward.You forget to comb your hair, to shower, to dress.And then one day, when you make the decision that you have enough energy left in you to do this one, last, monumental thing, there comes a peace. Suddenly you are counting moments as you haven’t for months. Suddenly you have a secret that makes you smile, that makes people say you look wonderful, although you feel like a shell-brittle and capable of cracking into a thousand pieces. ”

“It's choice that makes us human.”

“You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.”

“You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you.”

“Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being.”