Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.

Though he’d experienced complete professional success, total fulfillment as a family man was as foreign to him as his life was to me.

If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?

I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying that’s how a good man works himself up to do a terrible thing. It’s Human Behavior 101.”

“When you write something, you focus your full attention on it. It’s almost impossible to write one thing while thinking about another. The act of putting it on paper keeps your thoughts and intentions aligned.”

“It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world. After the baseball game today, we went to Navy Pier and then came here for dinner, right? But that’s only one version of what happened. In a different reality, instead of the pier, we went to the symphony. In one, we stayed

Robert Frost’s gold that cannot stay.

that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you’re least expecting it. No time to flinch or brace.

Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.