I am a shark, Cassie," he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man.

There are things that are too terrible to remember, and there are things that are almost too wonderful to recall.

There's a hero in every heart waiting for the dragon to come out.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was.

It's like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl.