The best thing a stranger has ever said to me:

"You'll die happy."

Said by a particularly angry Columbia undergrad student, wearing bermuda-style shorts in the dead of winter, on the bottom floor of a frat party neither of us should have been attending, after spending 15 minutes slagging off his ex-girlfriend for dumping him because of personality traits she learned from Vogue and Cosmo.

I'm not a huge believer in divination, but if an angry student of English literature, hell-bent on defying the whim of nature, has had a drunken premontion of my happy expiration, I think that's enough to get me to sleep soundly maybe 7 out of 10 nights.

The kid loved Spanish literature I had never heard of and probably just really wanted that ex-girlfriend back. But I can't help but think back on him with fondness.