“I couldn’t bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make things better for the next twenty minutes or so, over and over again.”

“I tried to think about what he had asked me to do, to step so far beyond myself. I found it difficult to think about. It was as if it hung over me, this huge choice I must make, this future I could not imagine.”

“You don't know me at all.You don't know the first thing about me. You don't know where I'm writing this from. You don't know what I look like. You have no power over me.What do you think I look like? Skinny? Freckles? Wire-rimmed glasses over brown eyes? No, I don't think so. Better look again. Deeper. It's like a kaleidoscope, isn't it? One minute I'm short, the next minute tall, one minute I'm geeky, one minute studly, my shape constantly changes, and the only thing that stays constant is my brown eyes. Watching you. ”

“I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn’t understand why the happiness never came, couldn’t see the flaw in my thinking, couldn’t see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. And all my efforts were doomed, because already drinking hadn’t made me feel good in years.”

“Travis smiled. “So you wanted to be here with me. I think I just fell in love with you all over again.”

“I couldn’t take the pain. I tried to get over you. Every time with them, I was with you. I’m so sorry…I love you.”