Mostly, I think people are fake. Well, what do you expect? The fake world we live in conspires to make us all fakes.

I'm an ex-Catholic priest. I have such a complex relationship to Catholicism. On the one hand, if I called myself a Catholic it would have to be a very unorthodox one, as I just don't believe all of the teachings of the Church. But on the other hand, I'm an educated man because the Catholic Church educated me. It gave me something that is really important to me. So I always think about my faith. I always have it, and sometimes I can't talk about it, and sometimes I can. I am like an adolescent in that way. Teens are asking questions: who is God and what does it mean to have faith?

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.