"No more waiting. You go out and live life, eh? Remember: You live life or it lives you"

"Even when there was love involved, something always seemed to hurt"

"I was thinking how life went on and on and for weeks and months on end nothing ever seemed to change, and then suddenly people would amaze you"

"There were still times when it felt like I was watching a movie starring everyone I knew in the world, except me."

And then she'd smile wide and hold out her arms, and say, 'If I knew you were going to be this beautiful, I never would have let you go.'

"Part of me was afraid I might be missing something, but I was always afraid of missing something. We all were."

'Ah, you kids,' he said. 'You think you invented it. All of it! Everything. You think you invented life.'

"She would look like the best of us and grow up laughing. Her laugh would sound like silver bells when we lifted her in and out of the shallow waves at the shoreline."

"All this drama, all this waiting and hoping and crying over things we'd been told, raised on, warned about, these monumental milestones that ended up lasting only minutes in our lives and were never, ever as wonderful or horrible as you thought they would be."

"I was afraid if I touched her something might break"