I'm telling you. I know all about darkness. That's why I am so hell-bent, every damn day, on looking for the light.

But the things we remember are what we hold on to, and what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives. We only get one story. And I am determined to make mine a good one.

I was going to make myself miserable on this trip by being overly serious and overly self-conscious and overly self-critical. And Jake was going to make me even more miserable by being the pure opposite of all those things.

The lived on the mistaken assumption that their lives mattered, that life was essentially fair, that it was all going to wind up happy in the end. I knew what they didn’t—that everything you care about will disappear, that deserving a happy life doesn’t mean you can get one, and that there really is no one in the entire world you can count on but yourself.

You can’t understand this yet, but that’s most of life: breaking your own promises to yourself.

[N]ot getting what you want forces you to appreciate what you already have.

The things we remember are what we hold on to. And what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives.