Book Notes

You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.

Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.

If he's forgotten me, I'll make him remember me. I'll make him want me again.

Always save something to fear- even as you save something to love.

You should be kissed often, and by someone who knows how.

Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents' generation and from your children's generation too. They'll never understand you and they'll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: 'There's a chop off the old block,' and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: 'What an old rip Grandma must have been!' and they'll try to be like you.

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.

I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.

Don't look back. Don't ever look back.

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.

We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.

Loving someone is like moving into a house, Sonja used to say. At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake has been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.

People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life.

You are not unique in the universe. No one has an easy time in life. But maybe God has effed up-as you put it-your life for a reason.