So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.

I'm grateful for a lot of things. One is not being a drunk wreck. Or losing all four limbs in some ridiculous East Village bus accident that I was so destined for.

Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all. But holes are interesting things.

The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

My instinct was always have your gun in your hand. Especially when you are telling somebody to do something. But, in fact, the police academy discourages this. They feel your gun should rarely, if ever, be brought out of its holster. Most certainly not when children are involved, which is exactly when I saw myself using my gun most often. A truant teenager loitering outside a movie theater is going to be far more motivated to return to school when he has the barrel of a .45 pressed against his cheek.

I'm always prepared for the worst.

I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don't even get that.