Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change? Or do character and habit form the immovable boundaries of our lives?

I never know what to tell them. I mean, there's nothing you can say to make a person stop hurting. Half the time, I just feel like telling them the truth. I'd say that for 3 months, you're going to feel worse than you've ever felt and you cope as best you can. And that after 6 months, the pain isn't so bad, but it still hurts more than you think it will. And even after years, you still find yourself thinking about the person you lost and get sad about it. And you still miss them all the time.

The movies are fun, but I'm a novelist. In many ways, screenwriting is much easier than writing novels. I find screenplays twenty times easier to write than a novel.

You've gotten so caught up in being alone that you're afraid of what might happen if you actually find someone else that can take you away from it.

In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.

He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever.

Jamie was more than just the woman I loved. In the year Jamie helped me become the man I am today. With her steady hand she showed how important it was to help others; with her patience and kindness she showed me what life really is all about. Her cheerfulness and optimism, even in times of sickness, was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed . . . Jamie also thought me the value of forgiveness and the transforming power it offers . . . Jamie was not only the angel who saved Tom Thornton, she was the angel who saved us all.