I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.

Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different

I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there.

Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?

My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind...

Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.