How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

I have never been shy about listening to the input of others and weighing it seriously.

Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.

Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn’t mean the weaker one doesn’t love the stronger.

Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak.

He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up the sides of skyscrapers. He was the Hulk when angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone. As I watched I thought of what Grandma Lynn liked to say when Lindsey and I rolled our eyes or grimaced behind her back. "Watch out what faces you make. You'll freeze that way.

I wanted to be the moron of the family, because morons seemed to have more fun, more freedom and more personality.