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1 " I hope [Willa] still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here. "
― Susan Meissner , As Bright as Heaven
2 " Everyone has a past, and everyone's past matters. "
3 " [Evie] says the flu wanted to make barbarians of us, to have us think life is not precious and the dead are not worthy of our kindest care. Our humanity is what made what happened to us so terrible. "
4 " Home isn't a safe place where everything stays the same; it's a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. "
5 " Change always happens... We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That's how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There's always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That's how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we're still alive. "
6 " You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road. "
7 " If people don't do their part to stop the spread of evil when they're asked to, it just gets stronger and then no one can stop it. "
8 " You want to fix what hurts the moment it starts hurting, but this time you're going to have to embrace the slowness of healing. You'll never be able to live with this part of your story until you realize you must make peace with what happened to you and your part in it. And that takes time. "
9 " Sooner or later she will learn time changes everything, takes everything: sometimes in a blink, and sometimes so slowly you can’t even see it happening. "
10 " Life is wonderful and beautiful but oh, how hard it can be. "
11 " I guess our eyes don't change much from when we were young. Perhaps it's just how we see things that changes. "
12 " I came through the crucible, and it did not reduce me to ashes. I survived. "
13 " And what does war even accomplish? How does one country win over another by simply killing its people? None of it makes any sense. "
14 " I no longer fear Death, though I know that I should. I'm strangely at peace with what I used to think of as my enemy. Living seems more the taskmaster of the two, doesn't it? Life is wonderful and beautiful but oh, how hard it can be. Dying, by contrast, is easy and simple, almost gentle. But who can I tell such a thing to? No one. I am troubled by how remarkable this feeling is. "
15 " With all great loves there is first a great struggle, "
16 " Home isn’t a place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. Change always happens. Always. Surely Jamie knows that. We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive. "
17 " He's more than just the baby she found all those years ago. He's the proof that out of a great pile of ashes you can still find something that the fire didn't take. "
18 " Death doesn't ever look at shoulda, though, does it? Death looks at nothing. It just does what it's meant to do. "
19 " The main reason I have come here is to shuffle Death back to the place where it belong. That won't happen if I don't get to tangle with it. "
20 " It’s as if the body is a candle and the soul is its flame. When the flame is snuffed out, all that is left to prove that there had been a flame is the candle, "