Sometimes they're tried-and-true - words that have seen us through our own darkness - and we pass them on like a great family recipe. But family recipes are sometimes formed around an idiosyncratic oven, or a particular cast-iron pot, and don't always reproduce so well in another's kitchen.
For example, when we were kids we used to love "Keep passing the open windows", quirky advice offered in John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire. Actually, we had myriad quotes from HNH, about sorrow and bears and inventing our lives - it's a veritable treasure trove. But the wry suicide humour of open windows, that's not going to translate easily; few people would automatically feel the solace in that line.
On the other hand, there's a Hemingway quote from A Farewell to Arms that offers a certainty of pain, and of life beyond that pain. It somehow reaches easily:"The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places".
It's not a favourite book of mine, but what a line...
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