Someday, I'm going to have to break some of your rules, Mom.""I know, " she said. "Try to do it behind my back, will you?¨You can bet on that, Mom.¨We both sat there and laughed.

The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.

The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.I knew that a part of him would never be the same.They cracked more than his ribs.

You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.

It took me two years to give him all of my heart, and he threw it away in one night.

I tried to gather all the pieces… I picked each one and fixed them so perfectly. No one could say that I was broken once but they saw my hands, lacerated by the splinters of my heart…

The more you communicate love in your relationship, you breathe new life into it.

she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back.She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Americans never quit.

There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can't cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans.

If there was strife and contention in the home, very little else in life could compensate for it.

The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.

It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win.