We all miss you so much. It just never ends. It feels like we were all wounded in your battle, Caroline. I miss you. I love you.

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor.

In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies.

Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

Walt Whitman is HOT! I mean, that guy could sound his barbaric yawps over the roofs of my world any time.