I love you' really is the gateway drug of breaking up.

You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.

Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

The Colonel led all the cheers. Cornbread!" he screamed. CHICKEN!" the crowd responded. Rice!" PEAS!" And then, all together: "WE GOT HIGHER SATs." Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" the Colonel cried. YOU'LL BE WORKIN' FOR US SOMEDAY!

Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.

We fell. We got up. We ran.