“I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?”

“The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived.”

“and all I could think was that I would like to spend every morning for the rest of my life waking up beside her”

“I’d accepted my judgment without question. Agreed to live a mortal life. I didn’t know my memories would come with me; didn’t know I’d relive them every day.Death would have been more merciful.”

“I knew I would wish for that moment back every day of my life, so I lived it with everything I had.”

“As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.”