Leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can't do that until your life has grown roots.

The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic

So keeping the box closed just keeps you in the dark, not the universe.

I think maybe the reason I have spent most of my life being afraid is that I have been trying to prepare myself to train my body for real fear when it comes. But I am not prepared.

She was nothing but good and I was nothing but bad, but then she died, and I didn't.

For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.

Every second of your definitionally temporary consciousness, you are choosing how you spend something that will not last forever.