Quotes from Ellyn Bache

But some climbs you have to make alone.

When you're down, remember your triumphs. [...] Sometimes you get in trouble and crash. Other times: just a bumpy landing.

It's normal to shy away from illness and death. It's natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.

You move forward. You face up to your challenges. You don't retreat. You're young, and sometimes you'll wish you could. But don't.

Everybody's brave when they don't have any choice

Odd, how in the afterglow of someone else's life, your own looks so much brighter.

Thanks for . . . what you remember. And what you don't. It's not nothing. It's a lot.

Why was I standing on the street when the window feel out of the building? Why did the bus run over me? Because it was my turn in the barrel, that's why.

When you're down, remember your triumphs. That's what I need to tell the girls. Sometimes you get in trouble and crash. Other times: just a bumpy landing.

There is a certain point—she has known this since her father-in-law's long battle with heart disease—when a person begins to die in earnest. There is a hollowness about them. They begin to retreat. She has seen this, and she knows.

Talk about anything long enough, and you cut it down to size.

You're not really afraid you'll hurt him. You're afraid because you believe it was wrong even to think it. But having a thought, even an awful one, is different from acting on it. All the difference in the world.

Courtney leans into Andrea, buries her face in Andrea's shoulder. Andrea pats her daughter's back. Courtney blubbers. Courtney sobs. Courtney wails. It is the best thing that has happened in months.

If you believe in forever, then life is just a one-night stand.

What kind of religion would celebrate its High Holidays by reading about a biblical figure as heartless as Abraham—a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia, in Iona's opinion—who nearly killed his son because he heard voices in his head and was rescued from the dirty deed only by other voices?

It's normal to shy away from illness and death. It's natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.