“Without Victoria, life becomes lived in a kind of suspension, as if Victoria still might be here but has just gone away for a while. She is not physically here, but she is in my thoughts, night and day. Yet, every time I try and picture Victoria’s face, or what she looked like, and how she moved in the world, and all the little characteristics of a human being, I can’t see her at all. The visuals won’t come. I can’t even remember what my own daughter looked like. In desperation, I put up photos of her on a noticeboard above my desk , and speak to them, as if that will bring her back. The images remain two-dimensional. They fail to evoke the living girl that was.”

“I’ve noticed that most of us don’t realize how important this moment is. They take it for granted, know it’s brief and think that it can’t change anything. But I think it can change it all.”

“You are not your history. You are the stories you tell yourself.”

“Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.”

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”

“It will seem impossible to take the first step. But on the second step, since you already did one, you know you can take another. Then another and another. Before long you will have walked into your new life.”

“Born to love you, baby,” he repeated. “Die lovin’ you, my Sylvie.”

“What takes more guts? To fight for your own life at any cost—or prove that you're willing to lose it?”