So I’m thinking this is the part of my movie where things appear as if nothing is going to work out. I have to remind myself that all movie characters go through this sort of dark period before they find their happy ending.

You want to be a good person, don't you, Pat?' I nod. I cry. I do want to be a good person, I really do. 'I'm going to up your meds,' Dr. Patel tells me. 'You might feel a little sluggish, but it should help to curb your violent outbursts. You need to know it's your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.

In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me - in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.

I can be a very valuable friend to you, but you do not want me as an enemy.

Fly! There's a lot of sky out there for brave birds.

There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.

Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.