Sara Downing

“Once a heart breaks…it doesn’t just grow back. It’s not a lizard’s tail. It’s more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it’s not going back together. Least not the way it was. You can mush it all into one piece, but that doesn’t make it a window. That makes it a pile of broken colored glass. Shattered hearts don’t mend and they don’t heal. They just don’t work that way.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Happiness is something that comes from our own hearts, not from other people.”
― Lynn Austin, While We're Far Apart:

“love is worth doing. No matter how much it hurts.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“It occurs to him that there are different versions of himself to farewell—the abandoned eight-year-old; the delusional soldier who hovered somewhere in hell; the lightkeeper who dared to leave his heart undefended. Like Russian dolls, these lives sit within him.”
― M.L. Stedman