Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.

You're a big one,[...] a tall drink of water, but I got to tell you, you don't look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him.

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

I was a stranger and you took me in. -Joji G. Shoji, d. 1921

Words save our lives, sometimes.

I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.