Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off.

Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off.

We are all ashamed in one way or another. Who among us is not stained by the past?

How could she tell him that we come to love those who save us?

Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends.

She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame.

Heimat. The word mean home in German, the place where one was born. But the term also conveys a subtler nuance, a certain tenderness. One's Heimat is not merely a matter of geography; it is where one's heart lies.