Or is this how humans survive, shrugging off history, immersing themselves in the moment?

Everyone breathes in air, but it's a wise person who knows when to use that air to speak and when to exhale in silence.

Sometimes -- she knows this from her own life -- to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.

I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.

Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There! That's what is amazing. We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel - and suddenly it is an ax, breaking us into pieces from the inside.

the darkness is a cresting wave. It sweeps me up out of my body until I float among the stars, those tine bright pores on the sky's skin. If only I could pass through them, I would end up on the other side, the right side, shadowless, perfectly illuminated, beyond the worries of this mundane world

I guess there's a lot we hope for that never happens.