“Mortality is a cause for humility, she said to me. None of us knows when he might be taken, as your blessed father was taken. Death, like birth, comes to us all, regardless of rank or station in life.”

“When she was taken from me it was like the death of a world, an infinite number of futures coming to an end.”

“It's taken me my whole life to understand that the only thing between birth and death is love, that love is life.”

“In the cab to the station, he told me that when he was growing up he'd see a look of pleasure cross his mother's face and ask what she was thinking: she'd say, I was just thinking of your father. "That's how I want us to be," Archie said.I smiled."What?"I said, "I was just thinking of your father.”

“Humility makes us ready to be blessed by the God of all grace.”

“...after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.”