The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Being given the honorary rank of brat is the armed services' way of saying thank you to us kids for having grit too. They understand that when one member of a family joins the military, the whole family bears the weight of their service.

You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.

There're a lot of things you don't understand. Zachary smoldered his gaze at me. I came looking for you, and then when I found out where you were, suddenly it didn't seem worth it. It wasn't you. It was everything and nothing. Life. Ma's death. Talking to anybody. Not worth it

Why is it, she wondered, that things that hurt people make them deeper and more understanding?

God doesn't plan the horrors. They happen. But God can come into them.

You know when you cut yourself really badly, it doesn't hurt for a while. You don't feel anything. Death- our reaction to death- is sort of like that. You don't feel anything at all. And then, later on, you begin to hurt.

You learn more from your tears than your smiles.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.

When pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.