(Sue Monk Kidd)

• People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. (pg. 2)
• "Who do you think you are, Julius Shakespeare?" The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival. (pg. 16)
• For a moment I lost my boundaries, feeling like the sky was my own skin and the moon was my heart beating up there in the dark. (pg. 23)
• The door closed. So quiet it amounted to nothing but a snap of air, and that was the strangeness of it, how a small sound like that could fall across the whole world. (pg. 33)
• There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful. (pg. 50)
• That was the absolute way of things. Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it. (pg. 55)
• I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it. (pg. 63)
• The night seemed like an inkblot I had to figure out. I sat there and studied the darkness, trying to see through it to some sliver of light. (pg. 101)
• I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away. (pg. 104-105)
• It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I've never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between coming and going. (pg. 113)
• "...bees have a secret life we don't know anything about." I loved the idea of bees having a secret life, just like the one I was living. (pg. 148)
• "...life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life." (pg. 206)
• "...when it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid." (pg. 211)
• He bent his face close to mine and kissed me. At first it was like moth wings brushing my lips, then his mouth opening on mine. I gave way against him. He kissed me gently, but at the same time hungrily, and I liked how he tasted, the scent of his skin, the way his lips opened and closed, opened and closed. I was floating on a river of light. Escorted by fish. Jeweled with fish. And even with so much beautiful aching inside my body, with life throbbing beneath my skin and the rushing ways of love taking over, even with all of that, I could feel the fish dying against my heart. (pg. 230)
• "There is nothing perfect," August said from the doorway. "There is only life." (pg. 256)