The Saving Graces

I hate jealousy. At least it's its own punishment; it makes me feel like hell.

laughter is cathartic and cleansing, that it's good for the body and the soul, and when it's real it's better than sex.

You were the best thing in my life … I did love you. I do. As much as I’ve ever loved anyone, as much as I can. It feels like a lot – it takes up my whole heart.

I love the slow, warming sensation of my body going numb when I drink.

Little things. The thought of losing them makes them unbearably dear ... I only think of the sweetness. Simple things. The quarter moon, the taste of an orange. The smell of the pages of a new book.

All my life I've wanted to tell people I love them. Fear usually held me back, that they wouldn't care, or they wouldn't hear, or they would take too much from me once they knew.

I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me.

Bad news doesn't hurt as much, if you hear it in good company. It's like, if somebody pushes you out of a 5th floor window and you bounce off an awning, a car roof, and a pile of plastic garbage bags before you smash onto the pavement, you've got a pretty good chance of surviving.

Fear kills. Protecting yourself backfires eventually. And living in fear of pain isn't really living at all.

Isabel never despaired, even though I think she knew everything that was going to happen, right from the beginning. There was a Walt Whitman poem she liked, especially the part that went - 'All goes onward and outward,/Nothing collapses/And to die is different from/What anyone supposes/And Luckier.' She tried to believe that, and it gave her some comfort, I know. She was very brave. Always. She hid her anguish and sadness, although I know she felt them. Because she wasn't losing only one person she loved - as we have. She was losing all of them.

Topics... are what people talk about when they don't know each other well. Topics... are what men talk about.

Never throw love away, never neglect it. Never assume you'll find better love somewhere else. Take it wherever you're lucky enough to find it, and always try to return it in kind. Don't take so much for granted.

I just tried to put myself in her place and figure out what would be the scariest thing. If I thought I might be dying. And it was being alone' ... 'To me,' she said, 'the scariest thing is oblivion. Being, and then not being.

I was thinking in a Scottish brogue, because I'd just heard this guy interviewed on NPR, Lonnie McSomething.

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