“It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all.Death is a head-on collision with your plans.But everything in life--the gold fillings of your teeth, the cotton of your sheets, the air you breathe, all the food you will ever eat--everything there is was born from a collision.Inside every single thing that lives is a debt to a distant star that died.Nothing new is ever created without one thing colliding into another.And something new is created when the person you love dies.Because they are not the only ones who die: you die, too. The person you were when you were with them is gone just as surely as they are.This is what you should know about losing somebody you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.”

“Most of us have love in our lives. Most of us love other people are are ourselves loved by others.But make no mistake: you are alone in the world. You were born alone, even if you were born conjoined. And you die alone, unable to bring a single person with you.”

“This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.”

“If you meet somebody and they love you when you are your true, awful, not-ready-yet, boring, not cool enough, not handsome enough, not pretty enough, too fat, too poor self? And if you love them back so much it makes you calm? And they have flaws and you do not mind a single one of them? That means you get yourself to the church and you pull one of those priests out of bed and you have him cast one of those wedding spells on you. If you’re gay and this happens, you might have to rent a car first and drive to one of the states that operates a few hours ahead. Because if you found that, you found it.”

“Are you one of those people who says on a first date, 'I'm really not in a hurry to meet somebody, I figure if it happens, it happens'? Because those are the most desperate people of all. I'm just saying this so that if you are this person, you aren't hiding it from anybody.There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.”

“When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all.”

“This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.”