Here's my answer to the very real existential crisis that grips me midway through everything I've ever tried to do: I think stories help us fight the nihilistic urges that constantly threaten to consume us.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?

One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.

I knew that time would now pass for me differently than it would for him - that I, like everyone in that room, would go on accumulating loves and losses while he would not. And for me, that was the final and truly unbearable tragedy: Like all the innumerable dead, he'd once and for all been demoted from haunted to haunter.

I found his last words without too much searching. Captured by the Bolivian army, Guevara said, 'Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.

But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?" I nodded into his shirt. "Gives you an idea how I feel about you," he said. My old man. He always knew just what to say.

Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.