"There are so many different ways lives work out, so many stories, and every one of them is precious: full of joy and heartbreak, and a fair amount of situation comedy. Every life is a movie that starts in color. They just all end in black and white."

“I thought about how the sound of burning and the sound of running water are almost the same.”

“The present is a rope stretched over the past. The secret to walking it is, you never look down. Not for anyone, not even family. The secret is to pretend you can’t hear the voices of the people who have fallen down there in the dark.”

“I kept on ignoring him. The dead are only ghosts, after all.”

“In short, I was behaving well...but at another level I was just Going Through The Motions. One of the things about being a grown-up is learning how to do that, learning how to act right even when you feel wrong.”

“Ghosts don’t do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself.”

“Houston is basically a concrete saucepan full of swamp water. The sun heats it up to a slow boil in May and keeps it simmering through to the end of October.”