“Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.”

“Was that what Nell had done, too? Forsaken the life and the family she'd been given, to focus instead on the one she'd been without.”

“But happiness ... happiness grows at our own firesides,' she said. 'It is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.”

“. . . happiness grows at our own firesides, . . . . It is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.”

“Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.”

“She was the sort of person who needed to be kept happy, he realized. Not as a matter of selfish expectation, but as a simple fact of design; like a piano or a harp, she'd been made to function best at a certain tuning.”

“It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?”