“Everything about death is a cliché until you're in it.”

“Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part--time and space and the heart's weariness are the blander executioners of human connection.”

“It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.”

“That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.”

“The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.”

“Near the end I asked him one night in the hospital corridor what he thought was happening, and he said, "Tell her everything you haven't said," and I smiled with relief. "There's nothing," I said. "I've already told her everything.”

“It's and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.”