“Take a plain-Jane rock and polish it, and you'll find a gem.”

“Conner hadn’t liked leaving the gravesite with his father still not buried. But he’d learned from his grandmother’s funeral that you have to go. It’s expected. Nobody hangs around the cemetary. Grief—a little or a lot—is tucked into your pocket and carried away.”

“If you don’t deal with the past, the past deals with you.”

“Your eyes are everything. (Maybe why some people give up on talking.)”

“You'll mend, you may never let another man near you again, but you'll be strong. Woman are. When a man breaks he stays broken.”

“For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before. ”

“You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.”