Beauty comes from tenderness.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

In fiction, you can be as true as you want. Real life is a different story.

It's always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.

There on the sofa, as I nursed Maxie and her eyes slid closed, I said to the girls, 'I think nursing is where kisses come from.' I had been thinking about it. Nursing had to be the place where nurturing and sweet milk and soft skin and mouths and warmth all came together and started to mean something about love. I had always assumed kissing was a learned thing, like waving bye-bye or speaking a language. But since Maxie, I'd decided that it was innate, the adult version of something we know to do from the moment we're born. All of it tied together in the cycle of life.

Don't let anyone convince you that love doesn't matter.

Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are.