“I had entered Kidneyland. I was officially a patient now. Somehow, I had managed to walk through the door: WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF SICKNESS. We have air-conditioning and HBO.”

“I've entered the looney bin," I told another unwitting customer, this one female."It's always like that around here," the customer replied. "That's why I come, it's like walking into a sitcom that could only air on HBO.”

“I recognized that the kiss was a door I had walked through.”

“I had officially joined the cacophony of sick mother fuckers.”

“The door through which he had glimpsed such wondrous light, he had walked through. He had encountered both beauty and pain. Now he understood that was how it would always be—no matter where he went in the world.”

“As I walked back to civilization, I realized that for the first time in the six months I had known Curran, we had managed to have a conversation and part ways without wanting to kill each other. I found that fact deeply troubling.”