I know my life's meaningful because" - and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued - " because I'm a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.

When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it, as if by being alive, he was staking claim to life itself.

Could you have a real friendship if some part of you was always expecting betrayal?

..how hard it is to keep alive someone who doesn't want to stay alive. First you try logic ("You have so much to live for"), and then you try guilt ("You owe me"), and then you try anger, and threats, and pleading ("I'm old; don't do this to an old man"). But then, once they agree, it is necessary that you, the cajoler, move into the realm of self-deception, because you can see that it is costing them, you can see how much they don't want to be here..

He had understood the wisdom of this, and still did, but really, the self was what they all craved, because the more you acted, the further and further you drifted from who you thought you were, and the harder and harder it was to find your way back.

Everyone thought they would be friends for decades, forever. But for most people, of course, that hadn't happened. As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren't necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic.

..didn't everyone only tell their lives - truly tell their lives - to one person?

What is life for? he asks himself. What is my life for?

Life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero.