The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame.

me: you know what sucks about love? o.w.g.: what? me: that it's so tied to the truth. I know it sucks, but in a way, it's good....Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?

You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, the little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that was not built for them by navigating a playground that was. . . Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Pete Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.

I love you present tense.

Random questions are the least random of all questions.

Grief does not change you. It reveals you. And herein lies the gift that cannot die. It changes the course of your life forever. If you allow yourself the chance to feel it for as long as you need to - even if it is for the rest of your life - you will be guided by it. You will become someone it would have been impossible for you to be, and in this way your loved one lives on, in you