“He cannot freshly harm me here, and for that I am grateful, but the harm he previously inflicted reverberates and grows. There is nothing to heal it but time. Even here, there is no other cure for heartbreak. I wish that death were a magical cure for all that ailed my spirit in life; it is one more thing I expected and found false. I arrive with the same baggage I carried with me in life. There is nowhere to lay it down here either, no more than a woman with child can lay aside her babe before its birth, for it is within me. I am as I was, just not encumbered with flesh.”

“In that moment, I wanted to cut out all my sins from my body and lay them down upon the earth before you. Like pieces of bark they are rough and dead, once clutching onto my very skin, all a part of me. You make me want to strip myself bare and lay myself out to you, I want you to see all my flaws, I want you to know I am not beautiful, yet all the while wanting you to take me anyway. I am composed of things that are dead, I am not a tree, I do not give life, I am just bark, flaws, stitched together with hope for something more. I wish for love, I wish for more.”

“Above all, there was Almah. Everything combined to make her most dear to me. My life has been such that I never before had seen anyone whome I loved; and here Almah was the one congenial and sympathetic, and I loved her dearly, even before I understood what my feelings were. One day I learned all, and found that she was more precious to me than all the world.”

“I just want to make it clear first of all that I do not have the AIDS disease. I plan on being here for a long time. Life is going to go on for me and I'm going to be a happy man. But sometimes you're a little naive and think 'it's not going to happen to me. It only happens to other people.' But here I am saying that it can happen to anybody. Even me, Magic Johnson.”

“I am completely happy. My sister is here, and because my sister is here I am somehow more me.”

“Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.”