“It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.”

“We took two of the kids up to the flight deck, and that made their day,”

“Death is as casual-and often as unexpected-as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade. ”

“At 19, everything is possible and tomorrow looks friendly.”

“A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”

“The morning after a death, we learned an avalanche of goodies about the renowned, some of which persuaded the reader that he should have cultivated the deceased in life.”

“Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.”

“Death is as casual-and often as unexpected-as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.”