Nicole

“This is why old people seem distant and distracted, he thought. We aren’t living in the past; the past is living in us.”
― Patrick Ryan, Buckeye

“And thinking of this now made me think of something I had often thought before: that there had been a last time—-when they were little—-that I had picked up the girls. This had often broken my heart, to realize that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say “Oh, honey, you’re getting too big to be picked up” or something like that. But then you never pick them up again.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the sea

“They were, Felix thought, like a plant that could only get as big as its pot, no shaping or pruning allowed. Still, a healthy plant.”
― Patrick Ryan, Buckeye

“The things that we love tell us what we are.’ If I ever get a tattoo, it’s going to be that, right across the top of my chest.”
― Patrick Ryan, Buckeye