Smiles

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“Where did feelings go when they disappeared? Did they leave a chemical trace somewhere in our minds, so that if we could look inside ourselves we would see via the patterns of neurons some of the important things that had happened to us in our lifetimes?”
― Evelyn Lau, Inside Out: Reflections on a life so far

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
― John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories

“The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, Hiroshima Notes