I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.

You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying.

He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy tale.

…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.

A few times a year I'll remember that I love old literature, too. Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" is one of my 10 favorite books. I have to go out of my way to remember to pick up a book like that, but when I do I'm blown away by how very relevant it still is.

My mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.

But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?