This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer.

We all need people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.

I had forgotten what it was like, to be drawn to a person...I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once you know what the pull of gravity feels like. and you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room.

She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.

Our mission in life is not to discover our fate as we go along, or even to procreate, but rather to fill up the endless gray void that is time.

Life on earth, filled with uncertainty and change, seemed far more difficult than what lay beyond the grave.