“In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.”

“I remembered the pain as clearly as if I were shifting — the pain of loss. I felt the agony of the single moment that I lost myself. Lost what made me Sam. The part of me that could remember Grace's name.”

“It is painful to remember what and who we've lost, but it's also comforting. Grief can become its own comfort...the moment when grief itself overtakes the one grieved. When they become one and the same, so that we fear grief's retreat as much as we feared the beloved's passing.”

“Now all the mountains had been conquered and astronauts had walked in space. There were no more islands on earth—no matter how small—left to be discovered.”

“there is no grief more devastating than the grief for what could have been.”

“This was what real grief felt like—she had never truly felt it before. All the times she had been sad, all the times she had wept in her life, all the glooms and melancholies were merely moods, mere passing whims. Grief was a different thing altogether.”