“My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot know what the future will bring or how the events of the future will make us feel. We cannot even plan and feel any certainty that our most carefully contrived plans will be put into effect. Could I have predicted what happened to me in the Peninsula? Could you have predicted what happened to you in Cornwall? But those things happened to us nevertheless. And they changed our plans and our dreams so radically that we both might have been excused for giving up, for never planning or dreaming again, for never living again. That too is a choice we all have to make.”

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”

“It isn't just the past we remember, it's the future too.Fifty per cent of memory is devoted not to what has already happened,but to what will happen next. Appointments, anniversaries, meetings,all the rolling engagements and plans,all the hopes and dreams and ambitions which make up any human life- we remember what we did and also what we will do. Only the knife edge of the present is 'hard' to any degree.Past and future are things of the mind,and a mind can be changed.”

“Nothing is certain,” he murmured. “The future is constantly changing, and no one can predict what happens next. We have the power to change our destiny, because fate is not set in stone, and we are always free to make a choice.”

“Life is strange sometimes. It throws things at us that, at the moment the events are happening, we can’t possibly believe or understand they could be good in any way, we can’t believe it’s what’s supposed to happen to us. But sometimes really hard things that make us hurt, that make us struggle, that make us fight for what we want, are blessings in disguise. Sometimes we have to live through them in order to have a better appreciation of our lives and the good things that happen.”

“There is no plan, no future laid out for any of us beyond what we make for ourselves.”