“Perhaps he had been waiting all along for someone to knock him down and allow him to drop the weight he’d so faithfully carried.”

“Life had called his name, and without thinking, he had stepped forward. He wondered if perhaps he was becoming the person he had always wanted to be.”

“When small drops began to fall and darken the world in penny-shaped circles, no one around him scurried for cover. For lonely people, rain is a chance to be touched.”

“Now on a sloping meadow hours into a fresh day, he found himself a desperate man, struggling to free himself from the shackles of a life he had not pursued. And her voice trickled through him, an icicle perpetually melting.”

“It had rained, she said, and I imagined the beads of small water on the windshield like a thousand eyes, or each drop a small imperfect reflection of a perfect moment.”

“I didn’t know who she was, but I had this fire inside me for someone I knew existed.”

“For some people, life is the process of knocking through walls to get out. For others, it is the building of walls.”