“But sometimes, a boat needs to rock; a boat needs to head straight for the heart of a storm and come out on the other side, weather beaten but with flags flying.”

“If I were to ever have a full-fledged vocation, as opposed to a half-assed avocation, I needed to love it and, in my experience, it isn't always easy to figure out what you love.”

“...in my family I have comrades-hearty and loyal-when what I need are intimates, and I've never figured out how to get us all to make the switch. I've never found a way in.”

“We talked and talked and talked. Maybe love comes in at the eyes, but not nearly as much as it comes in at the ears, at least in my experience. As we talked, lights flicked on inside my head; by the end of the night I was a planterium.”

“When it comes to Clare, sometimes, the past isn't past. The past can get as present as any present ever was, so near that I feel its breath.”

“There are people whose deaths make you ache with sadness. And then there are people whose deaths prevent the sun from rising, deaths that turn the walls black in every room you walk through, deaths that send storm clouds and a wail swirling through your head so that you can't hear music and you can't recognize your furniture or your own face in the mirror.”

“Sometimes, happiness feels so fragile…So what do we do about it?...Live. Forget that it’s fragile. Live like it isn’t”