“At that moment i felt lonelier than i'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything.”

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.”

“Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from. These horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he recognized the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain - then he was able to say, "Okay,. This is fear. Step away from it. Step away.”

“Dor felt a warm, calming feeling when he said those words—She is my wife—because ever since they were children she was like the sky to him, forever around.”

“Her divorced friends had made a pact not to leave each other alone on nights when loneliness had extra strength.”

“Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?”

“He could not feel agony. He could not feel sadness. His consciousness felt smoky, wisplike, incapable of anything but calm”