“Dying in our sleep won’t solve anything in the long run, even if a nihilist would argue it’s coming down the pike at some point anyway, so we might as well embrace it.”

“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”

“We all need something to embrace, even if it’s just our own torso.”

“In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is equalized with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run and matters are often unjust there. The compensating for us of the universe makes all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.”

“Our lives feel fuller when we can weave them into stories, even if not all the stories are true and even if we are just filibustering, hoping our number won’t be called--so long as we keep talking.”

“Maybe a family is linked in ways we have no way to understand. Some unseen, cellular connection that binds us past and present. If so, perhaps when my brother died, those cells we shared died as well. And for us, that would have been the heart. Those fine, fragile walls that let us embrace life with fearlessness and faith. We suffer because our heart is dying, one small cell at a time.”