“Because it is senior year I have begun to see things as potential absences. The things I love will become the things I'll miss.”

“It is still strange to see the skyline. I have never seen an absence that's so physical. It's possible I will see the absence for the rest of my life, even when there is something else there. Which is ok. The thing to remember when looking at an absence is that you are standing outside of it.”

“That no matter what i did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn't miss meant more to me than the things I missed.”

“misgivings, n.Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us. "There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more.”

“transient, adj. In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office, this desk. But now that school is over and I've been working at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it's only if it goes on and on that I will have to look for other ways to identify the time.”

“I guess I don't believe these things can ever be easy, although I also don't see why they have to be hard.”

“In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle. "Game over," you say, and I don't know which I take more exception to- the fact that you say that it's over, or the fact that you say it's a game. It's only over when one of us keeps the notebook for good. It's only a game if there is an absence of meaning. And we've already gone too far for that.”