“Stop telling me to follow my heart. It once led me to you.”

“If nothing else, one day you can look someone straight in the eyes and say “But I lived through it. And it made me who I am today.”

“I keep thinking you already know. I keep thinking I’ve sent you letters that were only ever written in my mind.”

“Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most. Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.”

“Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends.Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was.Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill.Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia.Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He’s an old man on a factory line. You wouldn’t recognise him.Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor.And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance.”

“I have a list in my head of all the feelings I still want to feel before I die. And you have ticked so many things off that list.”

“And when I asked you how you’d been, I meant I missed you more than I’ve ever missed anything before.”