“Things are strongest where they're broken.”

“Where there is love, there is courageWhere there is courage, there is peaceWhere there is peace, there is GodAnd when you have God, you have everything.”

“Despite himself, Beauvoir laughed. "There is strong shadow where there is much light."...But most he loved a happy human face.”

“Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner”

“What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be. ”

“Where other women ... were lovely, Annie Gamache was alive. Late, too late, Jean Guy Beauvoir had come to appreciate how very important it was, how very attractive it was, how very rare it was, to be fully alive.”

“The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.”