I don't want to make the same mistake twice. I don't want to tell myself it's over when it's not.

What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive.

You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.

Dead isn’t angels or ghosts. It’s a physical state of breakdown, a change in all those carbon atoms that create the temporary house of a body so that they can return to their most elemental stage.

It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?