“Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.”

“Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.”

“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”

“When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.”

“That's the fairy tale. You meet, you fall in love, you kiss, and neither of you is revolted by it. You get married and have kids and live happily ever after.”

“Men. You can't live with them, you can't shoot them.”

“Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.”