“It doesnt upset me to think about dying. What upsets me is the idea of John being alone after his spell passes. The idea of one of us without the other. (p.127)”

“Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before.He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away.(p...”

“I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering I just dont understand why hes able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again...”

“The sad truth is, John and I and the kids only took Route 66 once on our trips to Disneyland. Our family, like the rest of America, succumbed to the lure of faster highways, more direct routes, hig...”

“this is the problem with photographs. After a while, you cant remember if youre recalling the actual memory or the memory of the photograph. Or perhaps the photograph is the only reason you remembe...”

“The last slide is Main Street at night, with the castle lit silver blue in the background. In the sky, fireworks are going off, cresting, cracking open the darkness, shooting long tendrils of color...”

“I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only ...”

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”

“Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundes...”

“Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the ni...”