Nicole

“It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I was feeling then as I'm feeling now that we're each as vulnerable as that baby finch, little more than the gnash of beak and crunch of bone, in desperate need for someone to watch over us.”
― Michele Young-Stone, Above Us Only Sky