As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth. “Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.

Mortality means you don't have forever to work things out. You can live your life unexamined but then on the last day you're going to think: 'I've left things a little late.

Suddenly, details seemed extremely important. Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story.

Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

...You can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.