Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss or the fierce individuality of passion with the dulling universal certainty of platitude.

And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

To choose to live with a dog is to agree to participate in a long process of interpretation, a mutual agreement though the human being holds most of the cards.

It's freeing, to think that there's always an aspect of us outside the grasp of speech, the common stuff of language.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.