“What good are all those bits of nostalgia when the one thing that truly holds you to a place - the one thing that really makes it home over any other dot on the map - crumbles?”

“All the little quirks that make even the most barren, frigid places beautiful, that make a tiny gray dot on the map the one place you'll always call home, no matter where your glamorous, boring, adventurous, average, ridiculous, impossible, epic, romantic, bacon-infused life leads you.”

“Nothing - not prestige, power or pride - is worth sacrificing the things that you truly want, the things that you truly love. "Don't be afraid to take time and smell the roses. Don't hesitate in seeking out those things you hold dear. Seeking them out and holding on to them. And don't ever cease standing up for what you believe in, and fighting for those things that you want. Life is too short. Do what makes you happy, regardless of how others might feel.”

“This is what happened when one left one's home - pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind. Pieces of her in Vietnam, some in this place of bone. She brought the letter to her nose. The smell of Vietnam: a mix of jungle and wetness and spices and rot. A smell she hadn't realized she missed.”

“it's like one of your maps. There's never just one way to get somewhere right? There are a bunch of different possibilities. Some of them take you where you want to go, some bring you home, and others go somewhere else entirely. You can be really certain about really uncertain things.”

“And just holding her hand would be good. Can you understand that? Do you know that holding someone's hand can be `the' thing? Such a thing that your hands move while not moving. You can remember a thing like that, rather than any other thing about a night, all your life. Just holding hands can mean more, I believe it. When everything is repeated, and over, and familiar, it's the first things rather than the last that count.”