“He wanted to leave the past a few hundred miles down the road, shake it off like dust. But that ws the problem with the past. It kept finding him.”

“I think you're the kind of man a girl can count on. You just can't let go of losing your family. You can't let yourself love because you think your heart can't handle it . . . that something bad will happen. But you're wrong. It's true . . . grief is the price for love. But hearts are made to mend. Christ can do wonders with a broken heart, if given all the pieces.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we're all a little like Harold (a rooster). Real life carries on around us while we strut around in our own yards, thinking we're the ones in charge of things.”

“We fail in the work of grace and love when there is too much of us and not enough of God.”

“What was home, really? Just a place to lay your head.No. It was so much more than that. It was a place where a person belonged. Where a fellow would be missed. It was a part of a man. Something that couldn't be sold or taken for granted.”

“Beauty is more than perfect features, Birdy. There's something about you that draws everyone to you, the way flowers turn toward the sun. You walk into a room and the place comes alive. You are beautiful, Birdy. All the more so because you don't even realize it.”

“What are summer teeth? Summer in their mouth, Some are elsewhere.”

“Why did it take the threat of dying to truly notice how exquisite a sunrise or sunset could be?”

“Go far from home and yo will have a long way back.”

“Men are all alike. Grown-up children.”

“Time is like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. You can never go back.”