We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.

And as we kept driving north, the whole family in the care together, it got darker, and snowier, until finally the road delivered us to the one place that all my youthful trips west never could: home.

It's fine," I repeated. And whatever. It was fine. It had to be.

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

You know, like when you look in the mirror and the thing you see is not the thing as it really is.

That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.

They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter.