Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

...the long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, and you weren't yet where you were going. You were nowhere. It might be beautiful outside the window-and it was, she had sense enough to realize that-but it wasn't anywhere to her, just a scene passing by that was framed by the train window. (p160)

I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.

Trouble can always be borne when it is shared.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.