Quotes from Jill McCorkle

Make their exits as gentle and loving as possible...Tell them how good it will be, even if you don't believe it yourself. You're southern, you know how to do that.

She tried to teach her children to be positive--to dream but to also do it with their feet on the ground. If you let loose that balloon, you will lose sight of it, she said. The best way to enjoy it is to hold tight to the string and plant your feet on a good solid path.

he was convinced that if he claimed all the parts he really loved he would be able to make peace with everything else.

I am homesick and I am timesick . . . I miss all that no longer is, Lil says.

It made me realize that Beatrice had changed; that she did not pull her wagon so much as she got taken for rides.

The older he got, the less he believed and then the less he believed the more capable he was of believing. Such a cool paradox. He said.

We live days and weeks and months and years with so little awareness of life. We wait for the bad things that wake us up and shock our systems. But every now and then, on the most average day, it occurs to you that this is it. This is all there is.

No one likes to talk about the positive parts of getting older and aging into orphanhood, how with your parents you often bury a lot of things you were never able to confront or fix or let go of.

The longest and most expensive journey you will ever make is the one to yourself.

They were such an unlikely couple and there is such power in the relationship that never takes place in a permanent way, the mights romantically overwhelming all that likely would have been truth.

It was 1965 and life seemed easier. Her parents were alive and so was her brother, her bones were hard and strong and her vision perfect....It was 1965 and she was filled with hope, lush pots of ivy spilling from her window boxes as she leaned out late in the day to see the sunset, to smell the river, to watch her husband turn the corner as he headed home. She was so alive.

When she doesn't want to think about something sad or hurtful, she does what she instructed her own children and those she taught to do: Close your eyes and go somewhere safe and good. Picture something good.

There is a choice to make, a chance to take.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.