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.

The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. So much depends upom a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

We had to forgive to survive the labyrinth

And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. And the second moral of the story, if a story can have multiple morals, is that Dumpers are not inherently worse than Dumpees - breaking up isn't something that gets done to you; it's something that happens with you.

Yeah, so if that guy can make it in drunk, surely we can make it in sober. I mean, we’re ninjas.' 'Well, maybe you’re a ninja,' I said. 'You’re just a really loud, awkward ninja,' Margo said, 'but we are both ninjas.

Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.

Not to ask the obvious question, but why Alaska?