Stories are for joining the past to the future. (38)
…Where things came together but also separated. (8)
…where it seemed weightless… (8)
…the illusion of safety (9)
…and there was the stillness that precedes rain. (17)

Imagination was a killer. (11)

A mere matter of falling yet no one ever fell. (22)
It was the burden of being alive. (19)
It was something that would never go away… (27)
…all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. (24)
But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. (34)
Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. (41)

…they held hands as if afraid to let go. (104)
…words were insufficient. (51)
[But] still there was so much to say. (147)

…[He] imagined the feel of his tongue against the truth. (142)
…[It] seemed too abstract, too distant, with nothing real or tangible… (155)
For a time the morning seemed to brighten, the sky going to a lighter shade of silver, but then the rains came back hard and steady. (164)
…and what they wanted now was to… forget what had happened. (166)
…it was always the same, a desire to get it over with quickly… (166)

There was the feel of permanent twilight. (164)
Like the night had its own voice—that hum in your ears… (221)
…That’s the last thing I’ll ever see… (191)
I want you to feel what I felt. (179)
…You can’t ever forget it. (183)
…nothing to do but stare into the big black hole at the center of your own sorry soul. (205)
No moon and no stars. It was the purest black you could imagine… (220)
…and how crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive
could get so incredibly dead. (223)

Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased,
When there is nothing to remember except the story. (38)
...there was something ageless in her eyes…
just a bright ongoing everness… (238)
We kept the dead alive with stories… (239)
I’ll never die. (246)