“Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want.""What's that, Ritchie?"His answer is simple."To want.”

“Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.”

“Have faith, Ed, all right?'I search the coffee mug, but there's none in there.”

“God. Twice I speak it. I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. "But it's not your job to understand." That's me who answers. God never says anything. You think you're the only one he never answers? "Your job is to..." And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me.”

“Quite frankly, so am I, because what I'm about to tell you is a fact.In this country, there is only one thing that can draw a crown without any shadow of a doubt. The answer?Beer.Free beer.”

“I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her.”

“We're silent now, both waiting, till I remind myself that I'm the older one and should therefore initiate conversation. But I don't. I don't want to waste this girl with idle chitchat. She's beautiful.”