Headline?" he asked. "'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said. "'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said. "'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.

She said Robert Joyner had killed himself with a gun. And then I asked why, and then she told me that he was getting a divorce and was sad about it.' 'Lots of people get divorces and don't kill themselves,' I said. 'I know,' she said, excitement in her voice. 'That's what I told her.

I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

Books belong to their readers.

The nature of the love between a parent and child really is literally stronger than death. As long as either person in that relationship is alive, that relationship is still alive.

He lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps did not involve cigarettes.

We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.