memories fall apart too.

You can't just make me different and then leave. You can't. You can't change me and make my whole life centered around you, then leave.

If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.

Reading it the night before, I'd wondered if it would be like that for me-if in one moment, I would finally understand her, know her, and understand the role I'd played in her dying. But I wasn't convinced enlightenment struck like lightining.