Mercy

Traveling is all very well and good as long as you knew there is a place or person you can call home.

If you loved someone, really loved them, would you let them go?

This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty. 

There are some weapons you can't protect yourself against.

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.

After a while I couldn't remember whole pieces of you, as if part of the punishment was a recollection through a filter that grew hazier with time.

Allie knew the language of flowers - the idea every bloom stands for some quality of human nature.

I see us like we are in a movie, sometimes, except I'm not a participant, but someone watching the action.

If everyday flowed seamlessly into the next one for Cam, he'd never had to wonder, <i> What id? </i>

I have questions for you that I never got the chance to ask:
Do you look like you did back then? Would it make a difference, anyway?
Do you think of me, when you least expect it - when you are unwrapping a garden hose or tilting your face to the shower or making love to someone else? And can you leave it at that, or do you find yourself compulsively sifting through the memories?
If I had been the one to leave, would you have written out your heart to me?

For something to be real, it has to have an impact on the outside world.

<i> Why would have known that given the choice, he would not take the eaiest path after all? </i>

I want to talk to you, but I don't have the slightest idea what we would have to say.

'I told her that Frances would go when God wanted her. And' - he shook his head - 'Maggie said to me that if it was her, she'd want someone to wake God up and ask Him what the heck was keeping Him.'

How foolish it is to run away with a man who's already run away with someone else...


The way i see it, love is just a bigger, stickier form of trust.

There's a lot of things you can't see if you aren't' looking.

If God wanted us to act on instinct, we wouldn't have the power of reason.

I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin.  And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.