“This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.”

“I don’t glorify the dead. If I didn’t care if they were still alive, why do I even bother when they are dead. If I love a person when they are still alive, they will remain in my mind and in my heart when they die.”

“Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I’d found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler and I could care about everyday problems, when being relentless meant running two extra laps, not waiting for an MP to search the undercarriage of a bus for bombs before letting students approach it.”

“And I couldn't help but think about the time during the operation when there was nothing in my check: when they removed my heart, and before they put the other hear tin. When I was connected to the heart and lunch machine. When I was technically dead....But I wasn't dead now...”

“What do you think you’ve been doing to me, every day at work? Even before we were together, you teased me relentlessly. And then when we were together, when I knew exactly what I was missing each and every night when I went home to an empty bed, it was even worse.”

“When I am dead, I will not hurt anymore, will it Mama?...When I am dead, build me a little monument of stones in the woods.”