“Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldnt cha...”

“Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my moms voice came to me, repeating things shed said for months. Like, My skin is melting off my face, isnt it? And, My whole body feels dead from the crap t...”

“It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when were deprived of something meaningful.”

“My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. Shed set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. Id begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in ...”

“With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I cant explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.”

“When Dad was in the middle of a description of the hotels laundry facility, I interrupted. Why havent you told me today, like you do every day, that Moms going to be better soon?He looked up then. ...”

“Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

“The power to compel is not the same thing as leadership, and one does inspire the other. You are not a leader, Walters, you are a bully and a coward of the worst kind. the fear you believe you insp...”

“If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.”

“Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its na...”

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“But I understood, now, that we dont live only for ourselves. Were connected by millions of shared experiences and dreams and nightmares, all tied together with compassion. I learned that even when ...”

“Wyatt told me once that if tenderness were a disease, Id be terminal.”

“We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or it couldve be...”