“It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she’s gone. She’s gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it’s all I can do.”

The truth has a way of changing people’s plans.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

That’s what love does. When it’s right, it makes you more than you were, more than you thought you could be.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

“Oh, you know,” I say. “Sun shining. Birds chirping.” She raises an eyebrow at me, as if reminding me that we are in an underground tunnel.

He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep for the rest of my life.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions.

Sometimes drastic change requires drastic measures.

Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.

Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging

It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.

It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be.

Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

I really understood a lot more about comedy after listening to Bill Hicks, who died at 32 years old. He’s probably the best comedian who ever lived. Although you can’t say that because of Carlin, Cosby and Pryor.

No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.

With my wife I don’t get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to ‘the best woman a man ever had.’ The waiter joined me.

I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

It is not “forgive and forget” as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but “forgive and go forward,

In France, you can sell a lot, but nobody outside of France ever hears of it.