...a right to such tiny beautiful things...

"One hot afternoon during the year in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column

...tinging everything with shades of gray.

"Maybe we visited a place so dark that we couldn't see anything but the trauma or our loved one's absence and maybe when we came back, part of that place stuck to us like a layer of soot across our eyes. Or an iron weight in our throat. A shadow that filters how we feel and think about the world, tinging everything with shades of gray." -Dani Burlison; One Settled Comfortable in the Cuckoo's Nest

...realize they were the big things.

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." -Unknown