He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, 'Why?' Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, 'No, that's not right.' Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

I am Jack's smirking revenge.

That's how a good story works. It changes how you feel. It brings you to a greater appreciation, a greater joy, of your own existence.

Most guys will fight to know you. Some guys will deny you're a real person, and some will just ignore you." The zealot. The atheist. The agnostic.

I didn't use anybody's story. I used the context and the structure of the situation. People were so, so desperate to tell their story and begin to digest their experience - like turning it into a story - that after the fist few weeks I could go with a pad and pencil and take notes. People didn't seem at all bothered by that.