“What is the statute of limitations on feeling guilty for cheating on a ghost?”

“When someone you love dies, people ask you how you're doing, but they don't really want to know. They seek affirmation that you're okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (its three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that's about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will).”

“Sometimes I think we all feel guilty for being happy, and as soon as we catch ourselves acting like everything is okay, someone remembers it's not.”

“No one knows me here. No one knows that they’re supposed to feel sorry forme.”

“It’s strange,” I say, rubbing my feet against his. “I feel like I should be sad, but I’m not. It’s not that I won’t miss you, but it just feels like-”“Like everything is going to be okay anyway,” he says, finishing my thought.”

“I'm not sure if you even want me around or if you just feel sorry for me. I'm not sure of anything.”

“After half an hour of forced family fun, in which I score fifty points and take out at least seventy-five percent of my anger trying to blast Frankie with the ball, our game is cut short. Princess gets stung on the top of her foot by a teeny-tiny newborn baby of a jelly-fish and carries on like some shark just swam away with her torso. For one brief moment I wonder if it's the ghost of my journal, reincarnated after its watery death to claim vengeance by stabbing her with its thin metal spiral. The thought makes me smile on the inside, just a little bit.”