The Infinite Library

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

“Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

“If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.”

“I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.”

“I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that's all.”

“It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

“Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.”

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

“What is false about hope?”

“Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.”

“Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

“Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”

“Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.”

“I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.”

“There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.”

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”

“This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.”

“Love wins, love always wins.”

“Fear is how you lose your life...a little bit at a time...What we give to fear, we take away from...faith.”

“This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”

“When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.”

“A book with the genuine power to stir and comfort its readers.”

“Hopeless change be contagious, but hope can be too. And there is no medicine to match it.”

“I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle..the nights i can't remember..the mornings i slept thru..all the time spent running from myself.”

“We adults can be a wretched lot Chika, yet in every child's face we see the Lord has not given up on us.”

“Hopelessness can be contagious, but hope can be too. And there is no medicine to match it.”

“I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.”

“You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart.”

“Without love we all like birds with broken wings.”

“A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.”

“Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”

“There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.”

“Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.”

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins”

“Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.”

“Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.”

“Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?”

“Sometimes, love brings you together even as life keeps you apart.”

“Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.”

“Kids chase the love that eludes them.”

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

“Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.”

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it...”

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.”

“People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.”

“when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.”