“She was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who cared whether she lived or died. Sometimes the horror of that thought threatened to overwhelm her and plunge her down into a bottomless darkness from which there would be no return. If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?”

“. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don’t live as long as people do.”

“It’s painful, loving someone from afar.Watching them – from the outside.The once familiar elements of their life reduced to nothing more than occasional mentions in conversations and faces changing in photographs…..They exist to you now as nothing more than living proof that something can still hurt you … with no contact at all.”

“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”