And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

And I agreed, but still, she owed us an explanation. If she was up there, down there, out there, somewhere, maybe she would laugh.

Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.

I leave, and the leaving is so exhilarating I know I can never go back. But then what? Do I just keep leaving places, and leaving them, and leaving them, tramping a perpetual journey?

I fear your faith has been mis- placed—but then, faith usually is.

I'm at the eye doctor. I'm always at the eye doctor. It's like this is my profession. I am no longer a writer, I'm now an optomoligical patient. By the way, this job doesn't pay well.

One of the pitfalls about writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise-beyond-their-years creatures or these sad-eyed tragic people. And the truth is, people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. They're every bit as funny and complex and diverse as anyone else.