“You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”

“Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

“sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers”

“I feel about my dogs now, and all the dogs I had prior to this, the way I feel about children—they are that important to me. When I have lost a dog I have gone into a mourning period that lasted for months.”

“You do not yet understand the God who works in mysterious ways. He decides when it is over.”

“When a thing is told to you and you can't remember it happening it doesn't count somehow. It is as though it had nothing to do with you. Remembering, that's what counts.”

“There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.”