“But I'll admit I found this difficult. To Dad, I could tell, the story was over, but part of my problem as it relates to survival is that I have a problem recognizing endings - the right point to turn away.”

“although we all have dark bruised spots on our pasts that never seem to heal. Instead of fading, they pass through the colours of the rainbow, shining dully, differently, on each and every moment in our lives.”

“It's like you live your life not understanding anything at all and then you find out there's a whole new subset of things you don't understand.”

“That's my problem. I just have to do the opposite of what I'm told.”

“I'll have to figure it out for myself. That's thge problem with life. It's not really a spectator sport.”

“Not my finest hour," he says, shaking his head."You realize you did it for no reason," I say. I tell him about talking to my dad and explain that I was crying because of that."That information would have been useful BEFORE I shoved him in the pool.”

“Looking out over the water, I spotted him right away,straddling his board. He was only a dot, but I would have known him anywhere.I thought of the shape of his hands,the hollow at the base of his spine,the way my heart had never stopped skipping a beat at the sound of his voice, and I realized it was the kind of loss- because I knew now that the thing I wanted more than anything in the world not to go fully wrong could- from which I would never fully recover. And I'm not sure I ever fully have.”