If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.

Lament invoked love.Woe invoked wonder.Grief invoked grace.Cry invoked celebration.(Page 80)

Three years? That's a thousand tomorrows, ma'am.

She would seize every opportunity to dive into the bathroom, in a swirl of white towels, and once in there she was as hard to dislodge as a limpet from a rock.

When just a kid, moved back to Canada and looking for a taste of England, I__ picked up a book of my Gram__, a dog-eared romance from the __ixties about English hospital __isters_ trying to get it on with the doctors, and thought it very shocking behaviour for nuns.