Most important, though, is the unspoken understanding that both of you are people—weak, wounded, fragile, forgivable people doing the very best you can under the impossible circumstance that is day-to-day existence.

but the truth is no one can ever really understand the tangle of experiences and passions that makes you who you are. It’s a secret collection, a private language, a pebble in your pocket that you play with when you’re anxious, hard as geometry, smooth as soap.

“I won’t outgrow you.” And he said, “Yeah, you will, because if you don’t, that just means you’re as fucked-up in the brain as I am.”

“Hey, what happened to your foot?” And he could respond, “Better question: What happened to our society to make it so we view damaged things as somehow incomplete? On the contrary, I, for one, believe it is our damage that makes us whole.”

anyway and—you know what, if he has to explain it to you, it’s not even worth it.

sometimes after the bartender gave him una cerveza, he would say, “Merci beaucoup,” because that was his idea of a real funny joke. It was funny because the bartenders all spoke English

said: I can’t talk to people. I have too many teeth in my mouth; all the words come out wrong. I keep growing new teeth—it’s really weird.

I’ll be sitting on a train. I’ll be lying awake in bed. I’ll be watching a movie; I’ll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I’ll be struck by the paralyzing truth: It’s not what we do that makes us who we are. It’s what we don’t do that defines us.

Perhaps a better me would have done the right thing and left, or a worse me wouldn’t have worried about it, just indulged in the transgression, but I am only as good as I am, and I could only do what the person as good as I am could do.