The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

When I had finished, his face changed into a "serious talk" face.
     "Do you always think this much, Charlie?"
     "Is that bad?" I just wanted someone to tell me the truth.
     "Not necessarily. It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life." p. 24


     "Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve." p. 24


...Then, Patrick pointed at me, and said something to Bob.
     "He's something, isn't he?"
     Bob nodded his head. Patrick then said something I don't think I'll ever forget.
     "He's a wallflower."
     And Bob really nodded his head. And the whole room nodded their head. And I started to feel nervous in the Bob way, but Patrick didn't let me get too nervous. He sat down next to me.
     "You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand."
     I didn't know that other people thought things about me. I didn't know they looked. I was sitting on the floor of a basement of my first real party between Sam and Patrick, and I remembered that Sam introduced me as her friend to Bob. And I remembered that Patrick had done the same for Brad. And I started to cry. p.37-38


     Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms. And she kissed my cheek and whispered so nobody could hear.
     "I love you."
     I knew she meant it in a friend way, but I didn't care because it was the third time since my Aunt Helen died that I heard it from anyone. The other two times were from my mom.
     After that, I couldn't believe that Sam actually got me a present because I thought that the "I love you" was it. But she did get me a present. And for the first time, something nice like that made me smile and not cry. ... She took me to her room and stood me in front of her dresser, which was covered in a pillowcase with pretty colors. She lifted off the pillowcase, and there I was, standing in my old suit, looking at an old typewriter with a fresh ribbon. Inside the typewriter was a piece of white paper.
     On that piece of white paper, Sam wrote, "Write about me sometime." And I typed something back to her, standing right there in her bedroom. I just typed.
     "I will."
     And I felt good that those were the first two words that I ever typed on my new old typewriter that Sam gave me. We just sat there quiet for a moment, and she smiled. And I moved to the typewriter again, and I wrote something.
     "I love you, too."
     And Sam looked at the paper, and she looked at me.
     "Charlie...have you ever kissed a girl?"
     I shook my head no. It was so quiet.
     "Not even when you were little?"
     I shook my head no again. And she looked very sad.
     She told me about the first time she was kissed. She told me that it was with one of her dad's friends. She was seven. And she told nobody about it except for Mary Elizabeth and then Patrick a year ago. And she started to cry. And she said something that I won't ever forget. Ever.
     "I know that you know that I like Craig. And I know that I told you not to think of me that way. And I know that we can't be together like that. But I want you to forget all those things for a minute. Okay?"
     "Okay."
     "I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you. Okay?"
     "Okay." She was crying harder now. And I was, too, because when I hear something like that I just can't help it.
     "I just want to make sure of that. Okay?"
     "Okay."
     And she kissed me. It was that kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life. p. 69-70


I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like. It's much easier not to know things sometimes. p. 144


... because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. p.145


I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate." p.169


All I cared about was the fact that Sam got really hurt. and I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter. p.179


     And that was that. Bill didn't try to make sure that I would see him next year if I needed anything. He didn't ask me why I was crying. He just let me hear what he had to say in my own way and let things be. That was probably the best part. p 182


     When I was driving home, I just thought about the word "special." And I thought that the last person who said that about me was my aunt Helen. I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do. p. 182


I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going to buy her a present. I think that should be the tradition. The kid gets gifts from everybody, and he buys one present for his mom since she was there, too. I think that would be nice. p.189


It's strange the times people choose to be generous. p. 196


     "Charlie, I told you not to think of me that way nine months ago because of what I'm saying now. .... Not because I didn't think you were great. It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don't like, I'll tell them." p.201


So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them. p.211


Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Like Sam said. Because it's okay to feel things. And be who you are about them.
p. 212

Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts

It was strange how grief could hide inside you. Like a virus, lying low for months, even years, only to spring out and leave you weak and helpless again. p. 131


"...they turned their world around for me, and because of it, turned mine around with it. ...They made a home for me, and nothing that happened before matters nearly as much as everything that came after." p. 156


Intimacy, she'd always believed, took courage as well as desire. p. 214


"... Time just goes by, no matter what the hell you do. Some things you let go. Some things are worth repeating." p. 346

The Eye of the World: Book One by Robert Jordan

Sometimes you have to take a chance, even if it's a poor one. page 109


Anything can be a weapon, if the man or woman who holds it has the nerve and will to make it so. page 144


There must be a difference in what you saw, it seemed to him, depending on whether you sought adventure or had it forced on you. page 163


Take life as it comes. Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can. page 380


"Ila was giving me advice on being a woman," Egwene  replied absently. ......
    " Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are."
    "That, " Egwenesaid, "is probably why you make such a bad job of it." page 388


It was easier to be brave, he discovered, when someone needed your protection. page 630


"Peace favor your sword." ....
     "What a strange thing to say," Egwene said. "Why do they use it like that? Peace."
     "When you have never known a thing except to dream," Lan replied, heeling Mandarb forward, "it becomes more that a talisman." page 665

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

"That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories fade and blend and smudge together..." .Page 61


I went away in my head, to a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.  Page 80


     I felt safe. It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into that one place, that one time.  Page 127


"Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody." ...
"Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't." ....
"Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups..." She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, "I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they are doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world." ...
I though about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations. Page 154-155


     Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths. Page 156


Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting. Page 157


Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them. Page 170


 ...It won't hurt."
     I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much. Page 183


"But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is." And she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear. Page 196
 
     I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. Page 206


     I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.
     Even so, I understood what I was seeing. the hunger birds would-no, they were-ripping the world away, tearing it into nothing. Soon enough, there would be no world. My mother, my father, my sister, my house, my school friends, my town, my grandparents, London, the Natural History Museum, France, television, books ancient Egypt-because of me, all these things would be gone, and there would be nothing in their place.
     ....
     I did not want to die at all. Understand that.
     But I could not let everything be destroyed, when I had it in my power to stop the destruction. Page 216


I knew there was no going back, that there was no way that this could end in anything but pain, and I knew that I was willing to exchange my life for the world. Page 217


"Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans." Page 227


"You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it."..... It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having...if not died, then having given up her life. Page 231


     A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change. But I was seven when all of these things happened, and I was the same person at the end of it that I was at the beginning, wasn't I? So was everyone else. They must have been. People don't change. Page 235


"You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear." Page 241


"Words save our lives, sometimes." Neil Gaiman's Acknowledgments for The Ocean at the End of the Lane








    

River's Bend by JoAnn Ross

...fairy tales demonstrate compassion, intelligence, courage, coping skills and determination. p.221

Tribute by Nora Roberts

Homes are meant to change, to reflect the people who live in them. page 406

Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes

I gave this book 5 stars. Very rare for me. I was blown away by the depth of the characters (even the minor ones) and the controversial storyline. I had a severe book hangover after reading it and found myself thumbing back though just to reread parts. I read it so fast the first time to see what would happen, that I may have to reread the entire book again soon. Maybe this week.


The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life - or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window - is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people. Page 58


I needed to tell him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand. I couldn't say that to him, of course - Will and I have never been able to say much to each other - but I wanted to show him. A silent promise, if you like, that there was a bigger picture, a brighter future. Page 107


It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man - the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring - you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one. ....I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That's what he was asking me to extinguish - the small child as well as the man - all that love, all that history. Page 110


And as I stared, I began to realize what I was taking on.
     I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he could no longer make them happen by himself. Page 137


And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found myself thinking of things I hadn't thought of for years, old emotions washing over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled from me as if my perception itself were being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn't want it to stop. I wanted to sit there forever. I stole a look at Will. He was rapt, suddenly unself-conscious. I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was afraid of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of his fears. Will Traynor's life had been so far beyond the experiences of mine. who was I to tell him how he should want to live it? Page 164


I hadn't realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn't predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went. Page 164


"I just...want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. just for a few minutes more." Page 166


"You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible." page 194


     "I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make those two things happen."
     "You make it sound so simple."
     "It is simple," he said. "The thing is, it's also a lot of hard work. And people don't want to put in a lot of work." Page 204


"Some mistakes...Just have greater consequences than others. but you don't have to let that night be the thing that defines you." Page 247


"...I'm not expecting to recover," he said.
     "I'm not talking about physically," she said. "I'm talking about leaning to embrace a new life." Page 260


"Why didn't you make me do that earlier? All that! It was all there, all the time! Just under my nose!"
     Will gazed at me steadily. He said nothing at first, but his smile was slow and wide. "I don't know Clark. Some people just won't be told." Page 320


     "I don't want to go home," I said into the darkness.
     "It's a hard place to leave."
     "I didn't think places like this existed outside films," I said, turning so that I faced him. "It has actually made me wonder if you might have been telling the truth about all the other stuff." page 321


I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn't have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. Page 359


...I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to live.
     I realized I was afraid of living without him. How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I'm not allowed a say in yours? Page 360


Knowing you still have possibilities is a luxury. Page 368


You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in,....You changed my life so much more than this money will ever change yours. Page 368

The Quiet Game by Greg Iles

     The thought of Penn Cage helpless would shock most people who know me. At thirty-eight years old, I have sent sixteen men and women to death row. I watched seven of them die. I've killed in defense of my family. I've given up one successful career and made a greater success of another. I am admired by my friends, feared by my enemies, loved by those who matter. But in the face of my child's grief, I am powerless. page 2


     Something in my mother's voice triggers an alarm. I can't say what it is, because it's in the spaces, not the words, the way you hear things in families. page 8


In this room I educated myself, discovered my gift for language, learned that the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart. Years spent in this room made law school relatively simple and becoming a writer possible, even necessary. page 34


"... I've been away for years, but no one who grows up here ever really leaves this town behind." page 47


"...Because the day of reckoning always comes, when everything you've tried to repress rears up in the road to meet you. Whatever you bury deepest is always waiting for the moment of greatest stress to explode to the surface." page 51


In the face of grief, words have no power. page 68


     Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it's not even the past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose provenance dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.
     And who among us, offered the chance, would not relive the day or hour in which we first knew love, or ecstasy, or made a choice that forever altered our future, negating a life we might have had? Such chances are rarely granted. Memory and grief prove Faulkner right enough, but Einstein knew the finality of action. If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago. page 289


Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand. I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now. page 597


Their laughter is like lamplight in the dark. page 597

All the Light We Can Not See by Anthony Doerr

I gave my  this book 5 stars on Goodreads, which is very unusual for me.


"...I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me."
     "You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?" page 161


How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?
     There is pride, too, though - pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane. page 189


See obstacles as opportunities....See obstacles as inspirations. page 290


"When I lost my sight , Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?" page 469


The window glows. The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative. To be here, in this room, high in this house, out of the cellar, with her: it is like medicine. page 470


He thinks of the old broken miners he'd see in Zollverein, sitting in chairs or on crates, not moving for hours, waiting to die. To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really he thinks, it's a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop. page 476


He lingers over images of Marie-Laure - her hands, her hair - even as he worries that to concentrate on them too long is to risk wearing them out. page 479


It is the obliviousness of our children that saves us. page 516

Under the Wide and Starry Sky: A Novel by Nancy Horan

I was struck by the prose and the story. Now I want to read Stevenson's books and more about his life. These passages spoke to me:


Some men would run away from a woman who had lived life. He wanted to dive into that deep pool. page 80


"I don't know about surviving on it [writing], but when you have a gift, it isn't yours to keep to yourself. It's the reason you're here. It's your purpose." p. 96


Sick as he was, his features showed his boyish sweetness; he had in him a soul as pure as Hervey's [Fanny's youngest child]. He was brilliant, just, and wholesome - the closest thing to a holy man Fanny had ever known. In rooms full of people, she had watched others expand with happiness just to be in his presence. He was the most alive person she'd ever met. And he was funny on top of it all. How useful a thing it would be to keep such a man in the world. How extraordinary a life would be hers if she stayed within that circle of light. p. 181


Perhaps at some deep level she didn't want to look at, she hoped to redeem herself for letting Hervey slip through her fingers. Maybe marrying an invalid would be a prayer, an act of contrition. She didn't know. All she knew for certain was that she loved Louis. "I shall carry you," she told him. "And you can carry me." p. 182


     They made love tenderly and wide-eyed. She let go of the buzzing that usually filled her brain, the questions. Is he thinner? Was that a different sort of cough? Has he eaten his breakfast today? She pretended they were normal people on a holiday. Their reunion invigorated both of them.
     "What a morning," Louis would say as they walked the rocky, dry hills above their rented chateau just outside Marseilles. "I want to take this day, fold it up, and put it in my pocket so I can have it again and again. What is really necessary in life? A blue bay to gaze on. Sun."
     "We're rich," she said. p. 228


"Mr. Stevenson is not the easiest critic. I know from personal experience. You see, he considers writing a sacred calling-"
     "I can accept criticism," the girl insisted.
     "-and he hates bad writing. When you are learning, there is bound to be bad writing." There was something else she needed to say to the girl, though not yet. A woman's imagination is different from a man's. p.245


     Later she would understand that he was, in bursts, doing the writing that would solidify his reputation. Afterward she would recognize something else that they hadn't fully comprehended then: the subtle shiftings beneath  their feet that shook their certainties about who they were. While she thought they were happily expanding into house and garden, Louis felt his life slowly shrinking. p.251


She knew better than to interrupt Louis. Once he had said to her, "A story should read like a dream you don't want to wake from." Right now he was writing about a dream, and he was in a dreamlike trance as he did it. p. 262


      "Obviously, I am not afraid to write about cruelty or violence," Louis said. "but for a writer to feed the reader great dank heaps of ugliness in the name of realism is dispiriting. And to foist such stuff on young minds? It's evil. Writers should find out where joy resides and give it a voice. Every bright word or picture is a piece of pleasure set afloat. The reader catches it, and he goes on his way rejoicing. It's the business of art to send him that way as often as possible. I have to believe that every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world. If I cannot believe that, then why should I go on? Why should anyone go on?" p.274


In the space of a minute, Fanny was fairly certain she loathed Henry Adams.
     Louis, on the other hand, was beside himself with joy. It was almost embarrassing to see how excitedly he approached the men. He was like a puppy, eager to play, jumping around a more reserved dog who is not done sniffing, as indeed Adams was not, for his nostrils were flared from the moment he arrived, and they seemed incapable of deflating. ......
The historian's snobbery seeped through his every remark. "one must lower one's standards in the tropics, of course." Adams sighed. "Lord knows, Henry Adams certainly has."
     Fanny engaged the man's eyes. "We don't stand on too much ceremony here," she said. "A simple way of life thankfully preserves us from that burden. Someone without imagination might look at this place and see squalor, but we see possibility," she smiled sweetly. "And we are grateful to be living in Samoa, among people with truly humane manners." ........
     "Is the hostess feeling a bit churlish?" Louis said.
     "What a ridiculous prig! Does Adams always refer to himself in the third person?"
     Louis Stevenson was wondering the same thing," said Louis. p.374-375


     She realized their happiest times had been just like this, when the two of them were alone with the rest of the world at bay, as they'd been at Hyeres. They did best when they were making a new beginning, planning and creating together. She savored having Louis to herself, without friends or family. His jokes and thoughts were only for her. Pulled away from his writing by the physical work at hand, and miraculously healthy, Louis seemed reborn.
p. 375


Louis knew his friend regarded his collaboration with Lloyd [his stepson] as a colossal waste of time. Well, a man did for his family what he could. If I can't help my own, who can I help? p. 382


Now all Louis craved was freedom from expectations. He wanted to try so many things. p. 382


Always since he'd first known her, she had wanted to live a creative life.
     Did all women married to well-known men struggle for recognition? It occurred to him that his friends thought her greatest achievement was keeping him alive. They didn't care about her other qualities. It was a sad truth that while his illness had conferred on him an air of heroism, it had marked Fanny, his nurse, as a menial. He'd always held to the idea that she didn't give a damn what people thought of her. She seemed bull-strong. He had learned rather late in the game that Fanny was the kind of woman who needed building up. But then everyone needed praise. The question was: Can a person go mad from want of it? p.433


All this time, had he pitied the downtrodden, ancient Highlanders more than he'd thought about his own wife's suffering? Had Fanny gone mad from being uprooted so often? Time and again, the sweet nests she made had been pulled out from under her as she endured one more leavetaking. She was an earthbound person, seasick from the moment she set foot on a boat. Was it any wonder she had cracked after two years of cruising the Pacific? He recalled the phrase Henry had used to describe poor Arrick: Fa'ape'ape'a e le tu. He is like a swiftlet. He can never rest, for he has no home. Fanny uttered no complaint, but in staying by his side, by pursuing health for him-their holy grail-she had made herself every inch the exile he was.
     Louis felt his face go hot with shame. Dear God, what an ass I am. p.434


What am I to do?" she said, her eyes overflowing with tears. "I see bad things coming, and I want to warn off people."
     "Everyone must make mistakes. It's how we learn."
     "I never felt I was allowed them. for so long, with your health, there was no room for a mistake." .......
"How is it you can be so fearless in the face of real danger, and yet at other times be afraid of mere possibilities?"......
     He hadn't any idea how one was supposed to help a loved one find her way out of such darkness. What have I to fight against so unpitying an enemy? Only kindness. Perhaps with unbridled, importunate, violent kindness, he could woo fanny back from this hell. p. 437


               I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
               Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
               I will make a palace fit for you and me,
               Of green days in forest and blue days at sea...
               And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
               The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear,
               That only I remember, that only you admire,
               Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
     Louis watched from the doorway as Fanny read the lines slowly, then lifted her mattress and slipped the poem under it. p. 438


     He would regret to his dying day that he'd called her a peasant. It's a grave mistake to identify a person as one thing, especially one's wife. The woman he saw was kind, skilled, and generous-his wife of old, but so much more than a tender of others; she was every bit the adventurer he fancied himself to be. She could write a book of her own about her life in the South Seas. Courage was her greatest strength, and it had gotten her into places no other whites had been.
     Some days she was an explosive engine, but to tamper with her inner workings seemed futile and rather dangerous. She was not his to muck with, anyway. He did not doubt her love or devotion. For the past fifteen years, she'd spent her lavish valor on him. And all the while he'd pined for Scotland, she had wanted only to be by his side.
     He meant to explain to her soon something he'd come to understand. She really was an artist, but her art was not something that would be viewed in a museum or contained between the covers of a book. Fanny's art was in how she had lived her own extraordinary life. She was her best creation.
     In trying to nurse Fanny back from her netherworld, he'd rediscovered something within himself. It had done him good to know as essential decency still resided there. That much had not changed. In the end, what really matters? Only kindness. Only making somebody a little happier for your presence. p. 444


My God, I am nearly forty-four. Never had he imagined he'd live so long. p. 447


Miraculously, in small steps, Fanny had returned very nearly to herself. They were both tender, though, and spoke cautiously to each other. There were sore places that only time might heal.
p. 447 


"Since the day we married, you were my home." p. 449


"I've made mistakes. I have said things I regret, Fanny," He sighed deeply. "Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." p.  449


She looked lovely in her black velvet gown, and he felt a flush of longing for her in the old way. If he could go back to that day on the North Bridge and alter the years that had intervened, he would change a few things. But not this woman.  p. 452


He asked me one sunny day, 'What do you see?' I shivered and said, 'A lot of ice and two frozen peaks. What do you see?'
     " 'I see the blue space between them,' he told me. 'I see a cup full of sky.' "
     Fanny's eyes had spilled over when she told that memory. "It's sad that I didn't fully understand at the time what a gift his cheerfulness was. He gave that to me every day I knew him. It's one of the things I miss most." p. 465


Well, there were worse things than being known as the eccentric wife of a great man. p. 466


                Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
                A fellow-farer true through life,
                Heart-whole and soul free
                The august father gave to me.
                p.466

Beyond the Shadows by Brent Weeks

Do what you know is right, and you'll get the best consequences in the end. p.82