You were ambitious - for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the morning, and not for some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from an early age, you placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not your heart. I liked that about you. I liked it enormously.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and kids’ll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.

I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary.

Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.