We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.

Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.

There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again.

His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.