All I could think was that grandfathers were supposed to die in beds, in hushed places humming with machines, not in heaps on the sodden reeking ground with ants marching over them, a brass letter opener clutched in one trembling hand.
It’s not that I forgot; it just stopped bothering me. It was the strangest thing.
We’re all riddled with holes, and there were days when I would’ve done anything to patch mine, if just for a while.
Take your time. I brought a novel!
Just because no one remembers your name doesn’t mean your life wasn’t worth something.
The past is so much less terrifying than the future. Even the most terrible era of the past is at least knowable. It can be studied. The world survived it. But in the present, one never knows when the whole world could come to a terrible, crashing end.
An octopus in a tuxedo is still an octopus.
I think dreams contain lots of meaning. But that meaning doesn’t have to be literally true.
My brain, as ever, was a hope-making machine.
You mean more to me than all the birds in the sky and the heavens above them. If you love me, I hope I have deserved it.
Oh, hush,” Emma said, and then she caught me looking and smiled. That smile – my God – it lit me up from the inside.
Travel is crucial to one’s development. Until they have traveled, even the most educated person is ignorant.
Everyone must be allowed to air their ideas, even if they are misguided.
But now that we’re in the present, it’s different. I’m getting older, and for the first time since I can remember, every day I live is one I’ll never live again. So, I’m going to take at least one picture every day to remember it by. Even if it’s not very good.
Nobody in this world just wants to help.
War is a germ that can rarely be contained. It would surely spread.
Sometimes imperfect situations must be tolerated in order to achieve a greater good.
But luck isn’t something you can depend upon, and my mistake was thinking I could dive in again and everything would work out somehow.
They say it takes seven years for all the cells in your body to replace themselves. It doesn’t happen all at once, of course. You get an entirely new skin every three weeks. New blood every six months. A new liver every few years. Life changes are like that, too: Some parts of your life can change enormously while others seem frozen in amber.
Our worth is measured by how we treat the people we love – something my grandfather used to say – and the blunt truth was that I loved my peculiar family more.
It seems I’ve gone and gotten myself shot.