“Your child is hurt. How quickly can you make it better?What if you can't?”

“When you die, you don't get to catch snowflakes on your tongue. You don't get to breathe winter in, deep in your lungs. You can't lie in bed and watch for the lights of the passing town plow. You can't suck on an icicle until your forehead hurts.”

“You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.”

“How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?”

“You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.”

“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.”

“I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't.”