Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!

Grandfather informs me that is not possible.

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped.

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

...and when is enough proof enough?

With writing, we have second chances.

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

Nothing goes away. Not on its own. You deal with it, or it deals with you.

Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.