Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.

Fake it till you make it actually worked.

It was selfish what I asked her to do, even if it wound up being the most unselfish thing I've ever done.

Losing me will hurt; it will be the kind of pain that won't feel real at first, and when it does, it will take her breath away.

Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.

But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut.

In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald's at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I'd been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw this one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a cafe, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in aloud Texan twang.