“I have to admit, I wasn't close to my old man when he was alive. He was hardly ever home. But now that he was gone, and I was back in Pittsburgh, I thought about him all the time. I felt closer to the guy since he'd been buried than I ever did when he was walking around above ground. I realized how much I loved him.”

“When I thought I'd killed him, I felt more alone than I've felt in a long time. Like I couldn't stand walking through this city knowing he wasn't in it. Like somehow, as long as he was out there somewhere, if I was ever really in trouble, I knew where I could go and while maybe he wouldn't do exactly what I wanted him to do, he'd keep me alive. He'd get me through whatever it was to live another day.”

“Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.”

“And, I just can't shake this feeling I have when I'm around him. The chemistry, The electricity I feel when he's close to me or touches me, makes me feel more alive than I've ever felt”

“The moment that I realized that I wanted to be a better man for him and that because of him I was a better man than I was before I met him, that was when I realized that I loved him. No flaw that he had, no quirk could ever make me stop loving him and he knows that, so he's free to be himself and he's free to love me and because he loves me I'm free to be myself, knowing that no flaw that I have and no quirk could ever make him stop loving me.”

“The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was at the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back.”