Say Goodbye for Now

She was looking at her life. It was the same array of property and belongings she looked at every day. Except you don’t look at your life every day. You don’t stand a step or two outside it and say to yourself, This is my life. You just walk through it the way she assumed a fish swims through water, never registering it as water. It’s just what is.

In certain moments I suspect life knows exactly what it’s doing.

Smart is overrated. Most of the harm done in this world is done by people who fancy themselves smart. And they are—book smart. But most really smart people have no sense. They value their brains too highly. I’d rather have someone with sense. And a little heart.

Changing the laws of a country is not the same as changing its hearts and minds.

You think you’ll get over the loss of someone. Eventually. Because it seems we get over everything, given enough time. And I guess in a lot of ways I’ve partially gotten over the traumatic event of her passing. But what you don’t realize, until you have to live it, is that it’s the absence of the person that’s the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you’re missing someone, a longer time without them doesn’t solve the problem. The longer you don’t see someone, the more you miss them.

That’s the thing about days. No matter what your opinion of days, they always go by.

It flitted through her mind without actual words that skin is an odd thing for the world to make a fuss about, especially when, with your eyes closed, it all feels more or less the same.

But upset is a funny thing. It looks for places to direct itself. It’s an emotion given to action, and it needs somewhere to go. Even if it has to make something up as it goes along.

Almost everything is easier to get into than it is to get out of.

But what you don’t realize, until you have to live it, is that it’s the absence of the person that’s the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you’re missing someone, a longer time without them doesn’t solve the problem. The longer you don’t see someone, the more you miss them.

I suppose we're built with complete free will, and as much as we're capable of depravity, to the same degree we are wired for greatness. Everyone gets to choose, I think. And my challenge is to decide where I'll place the bulk of my attention. What I'll most believe in.

took her hands away from her face. It was hard to do. She knew she looked a wreck. But if you can’t trust a man to look at your real face and not run screaming, what good is it to have him around in the first place?

A lot of people only see the world the way they want it to be. They see what agrees with the thinking they’ve already got. The rest just falls away unnoticed.

When an eleven-year-old boy can be beaten within an inch of his life for walking down the street with the wrong friend . . . ,” he said, “. . . well, I just don’t see what chance we have, Lucy. We’ll get somebody killed.

Our problem is not that you feel one way and I feel another. Our problem is coming to us from outside this house.

Being a person is just hard.” “Why doesn’t anybody say so, then?” “That’s a good question.

it’s happy from the inside,

But dogs don’t regret what they didn’t do soon enough, or didn’t do enough of. Or what you didn’t do enough of. Dogs are where they are right now, in this moment, and nowhere else. Which is why I generally keep the company of dogs, she thought. Chapter Sixteen: Pete Pete eased the front door of his house open and then froze, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim living room.

Sometimes you don’t know exactly what it is but you know in your heart it’s not good.

Sometimes when justice is not close at hand, people are quick to tell you that you will simply have to wait -- that until the people standing on your neck feel more comfortable standing elsewhere, you have no choice but to be patient. They talk of this like it shouldn't be all that much of an inconvenience for you. But how do you hand a person back the time that was taken from him?

It suddenly occurs to me that happy families probably don’t repeatedly say out loud how happy they are. They probably think it goes without saying. They probably figure they all already know.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Because it seems we get over everything, given enough time. And I guess in a lot of ways I’ve partially gotten over the traumatic event of her passing. But what you don’t realize, until you have to live it, is that it’s the absence of the person that’s the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you’re missing someone, a longer time without them doesn’t solve the problem. The longer you don’t see someone, the more you miss them.

guess in a lot of ways I’ve partially gotten over the traumatic event of her passing. But what you don’t realize, until you have to live it, is that it’s the absence of the person that’s the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you’re missing someone, a longer time without them doesn’t solve the problem. The longer you don’t see someone, the more you miss them.

But if two people meet and fall in love, and try to make a life together, and fail, does that mean they were wrong and there was no love? Or does it only mean that they didn’t manage to carve out a space for each other?

He’d once overheard his mom telling her best friend, Judy, “Almost everything is easier to get into than it is to get out of.

What did it mean to be friends in a world where just walking down the street together could get someone viciously beaten? In what ways could that friendship be expressed?

I guess I feel like I’ve been putting up this big front to the world like I don’t need anybody or anything. Like I’m happier by myself. I don’t like being alone any better than anybody else does. I just got confused because it was better than being with most of the people I’ve known.

naturally. “Yes. I guess that does sound right. Does that seem like a crazy thing to say?” But of course it helped that he had been the one to say it. “Not sure why happiness should ever seem crazy.” “Although I don’t know why it should be a familiar feeling,” she added, wanting to fill the world with words. “Because I haven’t had much experience being happy. Not in the family I came from originally and not the family I created. So here I am looking at this scene and feeling this feeling, and I seem to know somehow in some deep place that a family can be happy. Not that I’m calling us a family. Of course. I just . . . I hope you don’t think I’m sounding insane.