Jamie Ford quotes:

I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.

The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.

Somehow life had become a story problem, and William was horrible at math.

But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.

Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley's Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime.

After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.

The library is like a candy store where everything is free.

It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.

Some things just can't be put back together. Some things can never be fixed. Two broken pieces can't make a lot of anything anymore. But at least he had the broken pieces.

Hope can get you through anything.

As an author, I get paid to break my own heart on a regular basis.

All good things come to an end. All bad things go on forever.

I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is--it just matters that it feels like home.

He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.

I try not to live in the past...but...sometimes the past lives in me

I try not to live in the past, he thought, but who knows, sometimes the past lives in me."

A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.

Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person.

Like so many things Henry had wanted in life -- like his father, his marriage, his life -- it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in.

He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.