“You’ll likely end up disappointed if you think people will care for you the way you care for them. Not everybody has your heart.”

“You will search for me in another person, I promise.”

“It’s okay to take time for yourself, whether to recharge from a particularly demanding day or heal from a hurt or when you just need to be alone.”

“People will love you, people will hate you, and none of it will have anything to do with you.”

“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness. […] Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.”

“You don’t have to have it all figured out at 21, or 30, or even 40. You’ll bloom when you’re ready. The only thing that matters is never giving up.”

“Falling in love doesn’t always lead to heartbreak. With the right man, it can be a one-way ticket to paradise.”

“You can’t cling to the past. Because no matter how tight you hold on… it’s already gone.”

“Whatever someone you become, and wherever you are in the world, I’m sending you love. You’re my friend to the end.”