Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair.

You'll beat this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will. You're a survivor." "I don't want to survive it." "I know that, too," Nell had said. "And it's fair enough. But sometimes we don't have a choice.

She did as she felt, and she felt a great deal.

Percy climbed the first step, then the next, remembering the thousands of times she'd run through the door, in a hurry to get to the future, to whatever was coming next, to this moment.

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it.