Ashes To Ashes. Garage Sale To Garage

When It Comes To Girls (and In Colin's Case, It So Often Did), Everyone Has A Type. Colin Singleton's Type Was Not Physical But Linguistic: He Liked Katherines. And Not Katies Or Kats Or Kitties Or Cathys Or Rynns Or Trinas Or Kays Or Kates Or, God Forbid, Catherines. K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e. He Had Dated 19 Girls. All Of Them Had Been Named Katherine. And All Of Them- Every Single Solitary One- Had Dumped Him.

I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies.

Crying Adds Something: Crying Is You, Plus Tears. But The Feeling Colin Had Was Some Horrible Opposite Of Crying. It Was You, Minus Something. He Kept Thinking About One Word - Forever - And Felt The Burning Ache Just Beneath His Rib Cage.

No, I Don’t Think You’re Gonna Be Single Forever, And Also I Don’t Understand Your Obsession With Romantic Love. There Are Other Ways To Have Fulfilling Relationships That Can Sustain You And Make Your Life Great And Fun Other Than Having A Sexualized Relationship. It’s Not The Only Kind Of Fulfilling Human Interaction. So, Even If You Are Single Forever, That Doesn’t Mean That You’ve Had Some Kind Of Failed Life.

We Are All Going, I Thought, And It Applies To Turtles And Turtlenecks, Alaska The Girl And Alaska The Place, Because Nothing Can Last, Not Even The Earth Itself. The Buddha Said That Suffering Was Caused By Desire, We'd Learned, And That The Cessation Of Desire Meant The Cessation Of Suffering. When You Stopped Wishing Things Wouldn't Fall Apart, You'd Stop Suffering When They Did.