He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.

He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.

In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.

Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals

When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.