We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy. "And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says. Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them. "Lamb roast. Am I invited?

Never underestimate the value of knowing another's language. It can be far more powerful than swords and arrows.

I would rather die than ever see you suffering this way. I don't want you or any child I ever have or any woman I ever love to go through or feel what you're going through, but it's happened and I don't know what to do.

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.

What is it? A prize or something? No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.

you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.

They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke. Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.