You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.

But the muse won’t always cooperate and she will never be coerced. Sometimes she’d rather take a nap or see a mid-afternoon movie.

I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have tried in vain, every day, to not think about you, and what could have been. What should have been. I would have tried to convince myself that there's no such thing as true love, except for the love you yourself make work, even though I know better....The bottom line is I never had any business marrying anyone who wasn't you.

That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.

Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.

We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.

Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.