She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

Sometimes, in life, nothing happens. But, sometimes, nothing happens beautifully.

I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite probably losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again.

They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.