“Life was good, one had only to live it.”

“I only had one life, and I'd be damned if I'd live it in a way that would make me unhappy and please somebody else. I had already lived that kind of life, too much of it already.”

“You have to fight for what you want in life. You can't live your life in the shadow of your brothers or sisters or parents; you have to live your life, and make it a good life, because you only have one.”

“This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.”

“I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.”

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”