I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.

In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live?

When you need to hold onto something, you should. Whatever gets you through, take it.

I couldn't remember ordinary moments, only the ones that had made an impression. Ordinary moments were the ones that fell away first.

When we’re alone together, I’m the destination. When I’m here in her life at school, I’m the disruption.

He doesn’t just look upset—he looks newly blind. There is such loss in his eyes, and it permeates every other part of his body.

The first sentence of the truth is always the hardest. Each of us had a first sentence, and most of us found the strength to say it out loud to someone who deserved to hear it. What we hoped, and what we found, was that the second sentence of the truth is always easier than the first, and the third sentence is even easier than that. Suddenly you are speaking the truth in paragraphs, in pages. The fear, the nervousness, is still there, but it is joined by a new confidence. All along, you've used the first sentence as a lock. But now you find that it's the key.