Tracie’s Reviews > Gone Before Goodbye > Status Update

“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex-no one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of-and yet we are convinced we can read other people. We think that we know what’s going on inside others, what they are really feeling or experiencing or thinking, but they can’t tell the same about us. That’s obviously impossible.” -Porkchop

“Do you want to hear the ugly truth?”

“That’s always better than the pretty lies.”

“Suppose it offers comforts?”

“It would be a false comfort.”

Sharon shrugs. “All comfort is false, when you think about it. That’s almost the definition.”

“The dead are dead,” Porkchop says. “You’re not supposed to get over it. You’re supposed to live with it.”

That’s what we stupid humans do. We carry the seeds of our own self-destruction.

“A hundred, two hundred years ago, only the most elite of elite got to experience one or two other cultures’ food. Now all of us can walk through any city and within a mile you can eat Chinese, Indian, Thai, French, Italian.... If I told even the richest king that would be possible, he would have never believed it. What we take for granted is nothing short of a miracle.”

“Don’t worry, okay?”

“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’ because no one ever worries after someone says that.”

“Enjoy the smaller moments,” her father had often told her. “That’s where life is lived.”

When you’re close to death, that’s when you feel your most alive.