“It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else's.”

“Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

“But mostly I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet. I still loved him. It felt like anything else permanent that has gone missing; a lost tooth, a severed leg. You might know better, but that doesn’t keep your tongue from poling at the hole in your gum, or your phantom limb from aching.”

“After years of seeing the world in absolutes, he has taught me how to pick out all the shades of possibilities.”

“I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?”

“Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being.”

“It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.”