Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.

Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath.

He doesn't have to say it, i feel it too; it's not subtle - like every bell for miles and miles is ringing at once, loud and clanging, hungry ones and tiny, happy, chiming ones, all of them sounding off in this moment. I put my hands around his neck, pull him to me, and then he's kissing me hard and so deep, and i am flying, sailing, soaring.

I've no use for talking, would just as soon store paper clips in my mouth.

Years ago, I was crashed in gram’s garden and Big asked me what I was doing. I told him I was looking up at the sky. He said, “That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was.

This is the secret I kept from you, Bails, from myself too: I think I liked that Mom was gone, that she could be anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I liked that she was our invention, a woman living on the last page of the story with only what we imagined spread out before her. I liked that she was ours, alone.