Hundreds,' Joe says. 'Hundreds and hundreds. But then again, I'm old.' So old, Jesus was in your math class,' I say. I crack myself up.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows down like a setting sun. I never get tired of watching them and I've seen them thousands of times. I always wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like.

I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay.

But then there are the van Goghs and Hemingways and Mozarts, those who feel a hunger so deep, so far down, that greatness lies there too, nestled somewhere within it. Those who get their inner voice and direction from the cool mysterious insides of the moon, and not from the earth like the rest of us.

At the root of every large struggle in life is the need to be honest about something that we do not feel we can be honest about. We lie to ourselves or other people because the truth might require action on our part, and action requires courage. We say we “don’t know” what is wrong, when we do know what is wrong; we just wish we didn’t. Art lets us tell the truth, but even art can be something to hide behind.

The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.