“I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's would still be open.”

“Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.”

“I smiled back and I thoughthow incredible that was, that they would find the time to smile. There was goodness in the world still, even if you couldn’t always see it.”

“I couldn't fathom it myself, but I guessed that happy endings came in all shapes and sizes.”

“The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars... I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did. I felt their completeness as whatever they had been in the world.I knew I had come there out of kindness, theirs and mine. The grief that came to me then was nothing like the grief I had felt for myself alone... This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way it added to me what I had lost. I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.”

“I'm still upset with my mother, though. And scared.If you lose me, I remember her saying when I was little and we'd go to a department store, just let one of those salesladies know, and they will take you to where I can find you. Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true-- that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.”