If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?

Dreams are built around the word hello, but in the end fate only knows the word goodbye.

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.

I never knew there were so many different ways to say good-bye

Lament invoked love.Woe invoked wonder.Grief invoked grace.Cry invoked celebration.(Page 80)

He turned to take one last look at the Old People__ Home that _ until a few moments ago _ he had thought would be his last residence on Earth, and then he told himself that he could die some other time, in some other place.The hundred-year-old man set off in his pee-slippers (so called because men of an advanced age rarely pee further than their shoes), first through a park and then alongside an open field where a market was occasionally held in the otherwise quiet provincial town.