What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.

It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.

Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.

She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket. He hadn't given her the thousand dollars she'd asked for-he'd given her ten thousand.

You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.

Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

The pity of it was that this discovery, if such it was, now seemed so stale, so profitless to me. What good was it? What good did thinking ever do?

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

Much will have to change in Canada if the country is to stay the same.

There is no man so good who were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

In Nicaragua, liberty, equality and the rule of law were the stuff of dreams. But in Paris I discovered the value of those words.

As I have got older, I have become easier on myself. It's about realising things can't be perfect.

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

You can have all the potential in world, but unless you have confidence, you have nothing.