It was like everyone suddenly knew what mattered. Money didn't matter. Politics didn't matter. Tabloid news didn't matter. No-compassion mattered. Calm mattered. Respect mattered. Did it really take something of this magnitude to make us realize this?

And who am I to blow against the wind?

This, I think, is how people survive: Even when horrible things have been done to us, we can still find gratitude in one another.

If you stare at the center of the universe, there is coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other.

You can't actually have a romance between friends. That sort of defeats the definition of the word "romance." The word you're looking for is "love." It's a love between friends, just as there's also love between lovers, or possible lovers, or even ex-lovers. Same holds true for "bromance" - it's just a clever word used to avoid the word love, for straight boys who don't want that old-fashioned taint of gayness. Dudes, you love each other. Deal with it.

We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the technicolor of the moment.

We always loved to say 'If I'd had a Monday-morning class, I never would have met you'. Or 'If you'd been reading something else, none of this would have happened'. We didn't believe in fate, but we believed in serendipity. We felt very lucky.