The Guardian

by Nicholas Sparks

• Jim's dead, and now that he's gone, I feel like I'm dead, too.
• It was both easier and more honest to simply shrug and say nothing. After all, she didn't feel as if she were going to be okay. Half the time, she didn't think she was going to make it through the day without breaking down. Especially on nights like tonight. 
• Everything in the house, everything she saw and smelled and touched, reminded her of Jim.
• I've always believed you were the stronger of the two of us.
• It broke my heart to think that you would be all alone.
• I was the luckiest guy in the world when you came into my life. It would break my heart if I thought you'd never be happy again.
• The world is a better place when you smile.
• I'll be your guardian angel, sweetheart. You can count on me to keep you safe.
• "Singer," she whispered. "I think I'll call you Singer."
• that part of her would always love Jim
• She could remember her tears and the total vacuum her life had become in the aftermath of his death, but the searing ache of those days was behind her.

• After the initial scream, she began to curse, combining profanity in all sorts of marvelous permutations.
• Look at me, she thought, I'm twenty-nine and falling apart at the seams here.
• Her mother, she often mused, had been fatally attracted to two things: booze and toxic men.
• she'd reached the point in her life where nothing surprised her anymore.
• she liked the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and she adored his dimples.
• She liked guys who laughed, and Mike laughed a lot.
• They think the stuff you hear in elevators is too loud and that rock music is Satan's form of mind control.
• "I think you had too much coffee this morning and you're not thinking straight."
• he felt as if he could watch her for hours and never grow tired of it.
• But as the minutes rolled on, he began to feel as if his future were that of a salmon swimming upstream.
• I'm pathetic, he thought. My life could send healthy people into comas.
• Those were the hard memories, the ones that left a bitter taste when she spoke.
• "So what's on your agenda tonight?" she asked. "Just the usual. Saving the world, feeding the hungry, fostering world peace."
• His only escape had been through the photographs in books by Ansel Adams, photographs that seemed to whisper of other places, better places.
• an angry man looking for pity and solace in the company of alcoholics.
• "Feminists take offense to everything that men do better."
• I may be a weak man, he thought, but I'm not a mean one.
• We mortals are sometimes plagued by things like how we might be coming across to other people.
• But Julie was as blind as an albino bat when it came to men.
• "Imbeciles," she whispered into Julie's ears. "Never forget that men are imbeciles."

• Even her shadow was beautiful.
• He loved her, and what was love without trust or honesty?
• Once burned, twice shy, the old saying went.