“If I told you it was on fire when I got here, would you believe me?”

“ When I started writing Forest Life, I was suicidal and drunk because I had lost someone I love to a tragedy. Afterward, my question was this: why love when death and suffering are inevitable? I won’t reveal my solution to this problem, but I do present it in the pages of the book. These are only a few of the issues I grapple with in the story and I hope that you’ll read the story and consciously address your own uncertainty and fear." - Shane Crash, Provoketive Magazine Write-Up 2012”

“" Me? I'm afraid if God does exist, if there is a creator, he's just as confused about life and death and love as I am. Mostly I'm afraid that I'll continue to exist after I die.”

“Before I sleep I normally lie awake and think of the future. I've resolved I can't understand life the way I can understand an equation or formula. For so long I've wanted to find concrete answers or die trying. It's hard at first to find comfort in not knowing or to make peace with it. But I think it is the only way to make it in this life. Getting stuck on a question only makes me estranged from the world.”

“I’ve learned that most people never bother to construct time machines. They’re perfectly content to stumble through life, seemingly unthinking. They’re unaware of their constant unending effort to suppress the despair they feel every day, the despair they feel at the impossibility of continuing to exist without knowing why they exist at all.”

“Even when I cried,” she said, a world of resignation in her tone, “I was glad to be here with you, Westhaven. Believe that, if you believe nothing else of me.”What she had meant was: Even when I cried because I must leave you, I was glad to be here with you… Believe that if you believe nothing else of me when I find the courage to finally go.”

“You were gullible," he said. And then, "When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn't eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you'd get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You believed everything I said." I did. I really did. I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he'd never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn't know what to believe. I just knew I didn't believe in him anymore.”