Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason.

It's not intentions that matter. It's actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.

A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.

She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are.

This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.

He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.