Quotes from Ellen Cooney

She was healthy & thriving, like a weed: a weed with no interest in trying to become, say, a proper flower.

then the bottom fell out of everything that used to have a bottom, and now she's expected to kill her own plants. At

it her fault that the graveyard has the best dirt? She loves her plants! Just

At his funeral, a supervisor of his home told me he'd made a request of his housemates. Whenever they looked up at a plane, would they remember him? And instead of saying the dumb thing people say when someone dies, about wishing their soul would rest in peace, he wanted everyone to think of him and say, like a solemn prayer, "May his soul have kick-ass adventures, flying and flying and flying.

Silently, his tears were streaming down his face like water from a faucet that could not be turned all the way off.

She didn't want the woman to open her eyes and her ears to the new stillness.

People are so sad," she said. "People are so hurt," she said. "So please let us not be empty like empty barrels," she said. All along, the ceiling light kept doing its thing. And together with Professor Pearls, we answered her, as if this had been planned, "Amen.

Loneliness. There is no worse loneliness than the loneliness of a dog who never was anything but lonely, because the loneliness is normal, like a heartbeat. Do you think it's easy to go to the place inside a dog where the loneliness is, when you can't even do it with yourself?

Sometimes when dogs greeted a returning soldier, they'd go over the edge. They would have to take a few moments to run crazily in circles around the human, or around a room or a yard. I'd have to take a break from watching, so my brain had a chance to absorb what I was seeing: that there is such a thing as joy being bigger than the container that holds it.