“The days seemed to stretch out toward infinity, blank and humid, without purpose, and at night I was kept awake by the endless drone of mosquitoes and helicopters. (Why wars must be contested under such conditions I shall never understand. Is not death sufficient?)”

“Two infinities: the one that stretches to the beginning but never touches-when you halve and halve and halve, infinitely-and then the one that spreads out into the endless, endless future, the endless, endless, distance.The set of infinities that is itself infinite.”

“I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.”

“Outside, gray clouds stretched to infinity. Were my parents and Mikey out there somewhere? I imagined them soaring like birds through the heavens, and wondered how, in a sky so endless, could there be no room for me?”

“I watched the night sky with it's countless stars and its moon, and I wondered about the universe and all that had been created, why the stars and the moon rose at night and the sun in the day, how vast it must be, how I could never understand the infinite measure of its size.”

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”