“And just when I thought the pain had dulled, my mind would betray me and bring Dad back to life in my dreams. Sometimes I didn't realize that he was dead until I awoke and then it was like a punch in the stomach. And sometimes I knew in my dream that I was dreaming, and I woke up crying.”

“My point is, I would never hurt you or your family.”I raised my chin at him. “If you tried to hurt my mother, I would totally kick your ass.”“Aha.”“Yes. You would be lying on the ground, crying, ‘No more, no more,’ and I would be kicking you in the stomach, wham, wham, wham!” He laughed softly.”

“His training had a fatal flaw: he cared. He asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner. He knew I liked green, and if he had a choice between a blue sweater and a green one, he’d buy the green one for me even if it cost more. I like swimming, and when we traveled, he made it a point to lay our route so it would go past a lake or a river. He let me speak my mind. My opinion mattered. I was a person to him and I was important. I saw him treat others as if they were important. For all of his supposed indifference, there is a town in Oklahoma that worships him and a little village in Guatemala that put a wooden statue of him at the gates to protect them from evil spirits. He helped people, when he thought it was right.”

“I dreamed that Curran and I killed a dinosaur and then had sex in the dirt.”

“My mind struggled to formulate a coherent though, any thought. I opened my mouth. "Your pajamas have Eeyore on them.""I like Eeyore. He's sensible. A sober outlook on life never hurt anyone.”

“When I got a bad grade in my old boarding school, Kate would make a trip to the school to chew me out. When I got homesick, I'd flunk a grade on purpose. Sometimes she came by herself. Sometimes with other people. Boy kind of people. Of whom I promised myself I wouldn't be thinking about, because they were idiots.”

“Living in your dreams meant bitter disappointment when you woke up.”