“I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous...”

“I just think that some things are meant to be broken, imperfect, chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, ya know? [...] If everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that. You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then, otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

“I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.”

“I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.”

“But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

“Fine," he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.”

“It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.”