Tragedy is when someone ends up dead. Everything else is just a bump in the road. For the record, that was something Daddy used to say.

A place isn't a place until it has a bookstore.

Eye contact made people think you were being truthful even if you weren't.

You can't avoid orphan stories, child. Every story is an orphan story. We are all orphaned sooner or later.

It is a lie that people who love each other must know everything about each other. Love must occasionally allow for a gap.

I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst.

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.