In seventh grade I gradually became aware that that quickness of feeling was something I was supposed to have outgrown. I was rather guileless, I think, or at least I was when it came to the people I cared about.

...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.

What I wanted was to write a memoir that was immersive rather than reflective, to resurrect a long-gone version of my own consciousness. I kept expecting that sooner or later the effort would come to seem like second nature to me, but it never did.

Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum.

I write out of gratitude for all the books I have loved over the years.

I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.