“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship, was that one had to explain nothing”

“I had to explain to him Mom's death, which was always hard to do. It felt like killing her again.”

“one evangelical scientist who had felt his doubts falling away from him when he was hiking in the mountains and came upon a frozen waterfall—in fact a trinity of a frozen waterfall, with three parts to it. “At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief.”

“Though I knew in my mind that others had felt such loss, this loss was mine, and I felt that no one would ever understand it, and to try to explain the lonliness and pain I felt would be futile.”

“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”

“It was a time of great loneliness. He had a group of friends, and suddenly I had no one and did not understand why. I felt excluded. Some days, the majority was in high school and did not know who to talk to. And that is something really terrible when you're twelve years old.”