Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.

Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?

Is there any place on Earth that smells better than a laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed - comfort food for your nose.

Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?

Some of us let this realization guide us... We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it's not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that's right ahead of you, you don't obsess over when the cliff might drop off.

How can you enjoy life if you spend every minute fearing the end of it?

Into the silence rips a sound that makes me let go of Max's hand and cover my ears. It is like the strafe of a bullet, nails on a chalkboard, promises being broken. It's a note I have never heard - this chord of pure pain - and it takes a moment to realize it is coming from me.

Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river.

You shouldn't believe what you hear about me, least of all that which I tell you myself.