Patients are almost always preceded by their parents, because no matter how fast an ambulance can drive, terrified parents can drive faster.

Something invisible snapped inside her.

What's the meaning of life? Other people.

She had the kind of fingers you want to interlace with your own.

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.

Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.

I didn't want to see them lower him into the ground in the spot he'd picked out with his dad, and I didn't want to see his parents sink to their knees in the dew-wet grass and moan in pain.