“It's the most beautiful thing in the world." he says, "I just..." He pauses and looks back into the fire. "I just kept walking. Wrapped in this white nothingness.”

“But then he whispers, "It will be okay, Mary." He pulls my head down to his chest and he wraps both his arms around me and all I can think is why can't life just stop here and now and leave us be in this moment.”

“Those days back there, in the house. That is my world. That is my truth," he says. "That is my ocean.”

“You know how you can think you know someone or think you know them but maybe you only know them one way?" He sneaks a glance at me and I notice that his cheeks are red in the moonlight. "Maybe you know someone as your little sister's friend," he says. "And then maybe something shifts. Maybe one day you hear them say something unexpected. Or hear the way they laugh and then suddenly you see them all over again. Like this time it's different. This time maybe you see them as ..." He pauses. "Beautiful," he finishes. Catcher leans in closer. "Wonderful and funny.”

“I know,' Jed says. I'm thrown over his shoulder and I can feel how his body shakes and I know that he is crying. For me, for Beth. And I wonder if there was ever a crueler world than this one that forces us to kill the people we love most.”

“He places his hands over mine, the feeling so warm and familiar. 'Those days back there, in the house. That is my world. That is my truth,' he says. 'That is my ocean.”

“I just sat there, staring out towards the darkness of the ocean and the starlight flashing off the crests of the waves and knew that we were all part of this bigger whole. That somehow I mattered in the course of things and a part of me would always have left its mark on this world.”