“Grief should have been all-consuming. I hated myself that it wasn't. But sometimes I forgot. Jesus, how could I fucking forget? Sometimes I went for minutes without remembering my dad was dead, but that whole time it was regrouping so it could hit me all over again.”

“I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes.”

“Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, 'If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been.' Then I will remind myself that I cannot.”

“Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.”

“Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.”

“I couldn't hear his voice over the hammer of my heart. And I told myself over and over I should have known that someone who could love so hard and so well could also hate, and hurt, as deeply.”