“We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana-seat bikes and minibikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living-room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and sighed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. We will never be that way, we said, we will never say those things.”

“If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life--This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe--who would you want hearing your whispers? Or perhaps better: Who do you trust to hear your whispers? Whose breath do you want mingled with your own? Whose flesh still warm beside you?”

“The simple rule: some get saved, but most don't. The choices are important before the years begin to go so very fast.”

“How about we give each other everything we can and not blame each other for what we can’t.”

“Suicides do not end their lives because they are weak, mentally ill, or depressed - though certainly they may be all those things. They are in blinding, all-consuming psychic pain, and perhaps on that final poisonous day they can find no reason not to.”

“A stranger came to their door one day. He was singularly unattractive - very little hair covering his hideous, sore-wracked skin, just generally ratty and nasty looking. But as is often said of the unbeautiful of the world, he had a great personality. He came to be known a "Funkdog", because he was, in fact, a dog, and he was funky. And so they started this thing of petting Funkdog with a small stick. That image always just made me want to bawl, and now I know why. I think Funkdog being petted with a stick is a perfect metaphor for what can happen to any of us in this life if we don't pay attention. In any area of our lives, things can go from great to not so hot, to downright unspeakable, and do it so gradually that we keep downshifting our expectations to correspond with our current situation. We settle for less and less and tell ourselves,"It's not so bad", until one day we wake up and we are in effect, hairless and scabby, and just hoping to get petted with a stick for a little while.”

“There are certain things in life for which we can never be prepared.”