“I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.”

“I don’t want to wake up ten years from now regretting that I let this slip through my fingers. I don’t want to waste another moment without you in my life.”

“For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.”

“I made up my mind right then what I really wanted in my life. It was comfort of a home and a family. But more than that, I wanted love. I wanted love to surround me. I wanted to swim in it. I wanted to hold it in my hand like heated sand and pour it through my fingers so it covered my feet. I wanted to taste it, I wanted to smell it. I wanted to wrap myself up in it like a blanket and stay safe and warm inside of it forever. And I wanted to give it. I wanted to drown people in it. I wanted to love with all my heart and be loved just as much in return.”

“And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.”

“The desert is full of things you can’t hold on to — light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had.”