But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

Facts, even false ones, cannot be copyrighted.

You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.

i know he's been looking forward to this--and i know that i've been looking forward to this. but now i have to stop looking forward and start looking at where i am. it's hard.

Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

C'mon Pudge. I'm teasing. You have to be tough. I didn't know how bad it was-- and I'm sorry, and they'll regret it-- but you have to be tough.