“What‘s worth doing even if I fail?”

“Just do the next right thing, one thing at a time.”

“Even in the most organized life there is room for whimsy. It just needs scheduling.”

“Of course you love your father. I might point out, however, that it‘s no crime to love the other fellow, too, if he‘s a good man who‘s kind to you.”

“How unfair that the past was irretrievable, and yet impossible to leave behind.”

“And the only thing we can do to cheat death is to live properly. Bravely. Love wholly.”

“But when you think about saints, I don‘t imagine any of them made their families happy.”

“It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do.”

“Maybe instead of wondering why we‘re all connected, what‘s important - the only thing that‘s important - is to know that we are.”

“Doing something for humanity doesn‘t mean you won‘t still find yourself sometimes hating humanity.”

“Who were you when you weren‘t wondering who you were?”

“How nice to see even gods have flaws.”

“The Word says God don‘t give us credit for lovin the folks we want to love anyway. No, He gives us credit for loving the unlovable.”

“I want to live a good life every day.”

“This wave now breaking on the beach had a whole history of its own, which I could never learn, just as we‘re all upon this earth ignorant of the vast, complicated histories of those living alongside us.”

“Control is what separates men from beasts.”

“Happiness equals reality minus expectation.”

“It‘s not as if we‘re going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too.”

”My heart was ripped straight from my chest and placed glistening on the pavement, and yet somehow it beats inside of me still.”

“Most days, these memories streak by in a blur, and my inability to see them clearly feels alarmingly like forgetting.”

“In the end, nothing and no one can hand you the map to your own grief.”

“He came from a woman and man, who fell in love, or had not. Who had married, or had not. Had spent a lifetime of nights together, or just one.”

“Most addictions aren‘t premeditated.”

“It‘s only when I look back now with the wisdom of age that I can see that warning signs were scattered throughout our simple life even then.”

”If you love them first, they won‘t be able to help themselves from falling in love with you right back.”

“Sometimes it takes a very long while to figure things out.”

“I think so much of making a relationship work has to do with choosing to be kind even when you may not feel like it.”

“What if growing up means keeping some things to herself?”

“Sometimes mad is exactly what you‘re supposed to be.”

“In the end, we are collected works.”

“Remember that a fine education can be found in places other than the usual.”

“I am an entirely insignificant event in the life of this cactus.”

“I was reasonably certain my son would be proud of me.”

“...because here is the home of our oldest and best friends-Books.”

“The problem was that I have never been able to do harm to a book.”

“He gave me a book to give her. Said that was the way to any woman‘s heart worth having.”

“I can‘t mourn someone who left me without a backward glance.”

It is a statement so perfectly dropped in the moment, I want to take a picture and frame it.