“Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: the nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people's, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains... At the core, it was all the same.”

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”

“You just know something is amiss, when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It's an absence--a loss of a heartbeat.”

“Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples," she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you thought, maybe they will."...You opened your eyes, which you hadn't realized were shut again. "what I'm saying is, We're the survivors," Sasha said...."Not everyone is. But we are. Okay?”

“They count that as your birthday -- the day your mother gets up.""Not the day you were born?"Not the day you came out. They count the mother getting better as all part of the birth.”

“A great love is a lot like a good memory. When it's there, and you know it's there, but its just out of your reach, it can be all that you think about. And you can focus on it, and try to force it. But the more that you do, the more you seem to push it away. But if you're patient, and hold still...Maybe. Just maybe, it'll come to you.”