Its easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything.

Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it.

Part of life is a quest to find that one essential person who will understand our story. But we choose wrongly so often. Over the ensuing years that person we thought understood us best ends up regarding us with pity, indifference, or active dislike. Those who truly care can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive our worst sins. Rarely do we find someone capable of both.

Death doesn't make you sad- it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know they're gone because just as suddenly, there's nothing left at all inside.

Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you've been away for years.

Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care, but because they don't.

If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.