I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

In the classics section, she had picked up a copy of The Magic Mountain and recalled the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, when she read it, how she lay in bed hours after she should have gotten up, the sheet growing warmer against her skin as the sun rose higher in the sky, her mother poking her head in now and then to see if she'd gotten up yet, but never suggesting that she should: Eleanor didn't have many rules about child rearing, but one of them was this: Never interrupt reading.

You must never check for a person's pulse using your thumb, or you'll feel your own heartbeat. Actually, I plan on doing that if I'm the one who's here when Ruth dies. I plan on giving her my heartbeat before I let her go.

I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.