“I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.”

“Every experience, good or bad, is a priceless collector's item.”

“She hugs me. It's tentative at first, a little scared, and yes, a little repulsed, but then she melts into it. She rests her head against my cold neck and embraces me. Unable to believer what's happening, I put my arm around her and just hold her.I almost swear I can feel my heart thumping. But it must just be hers, pressed tightly against my chest.”

“I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys”

“To be or not to be, that is the question: to go on living, fighting against this sea of troubles, or to die and end everything? Why be afraid of death? To die is to sleep, no more. Perhaps to dream? Yes, that's the problem: in that sleep of death, what dreams will come?”

“What is left of us? … No countries, no cultures, no wars but still no peace. What’s at our core, then? What’s still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped?”

“I try to think of things to say but nothing comes, and if something did come I probably couldn't say it. This is my great obstacle, the biggest of all the boulders littering my path. In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thought. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.”

“It’s not about keeping up the population, it’s about passing on who we are and what we've learned, so things keep going. So we don’t just end.”

“... we shoved out many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us - they were human, and so were we.”

“...wanting change is step one, but step two is taking it.”

“There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.”