“By not asking too much, you can believe in almost anything..like..a starry night in the mountains, or even the existence of fate.”

I’m not who you think I am, I had said to T.J. the last time I’d seen him. Maybe I wasn’t who I’d thought I was either.

When people went on vacation, they shed their home skins, thought they could be a new person.

It was always the same ocean, but the waves made it fresh and new each time.

After all, our families–our ancestors–are our identities. Biology is destiny.

Summer-induced stupidity. That was the diagnosis.

I suddenly understood. Mom and I weren’t trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.

…Promises are more dangerous then secrets.

I watched the land for as long as I could, until it disappeared behind its shawl of mist.

Come find me,” Leo put in, his gaze full of understanding. “Whenever you want. I’ll be here.

And until I had it fixed in my mind – unchanged, mysterious and beautiful

My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean. None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Marine.

I couldn’t think. The basics of my life seemed altered and thrown into question.

It struck me then how much the past – not just the past but history and family – was like the ocean tide.

A taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable.

Almost everybody that’s well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

There is a kind of serenity in love which is almost a paradise.

Ever since the day you left me, I’ve been so miserable, my dear. I feel almost as bad as I did when you were still here.

John Lewis we all know was beaten terribly, almost to an inch of his life, opened doors that will never be closed, although there are forces that are attempting to close those doors.

I own almost 100 hotels in North America. Some of them are only in management, but some of them we have some small stakes in them.

For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.