This is going to be one of my favorite Parade magazine issues ever. Kevin Costner opens up to the magazine about his late friend and costar in The Bodyguard Whitney Houston.

He was quoted as saying, “When [Whitney died], immediately people were on the airwaves talking about it. It’s unusual to watch the world talking about someone that you have a fairly unique relationship with. t’s almost surreal. This little drumbeat began: ‘“You need to say something.”’

Thus came his eulogy at Whitney’s funeral.

Check out highlights from the interview below:

ON WHITNEY HOUSTON’S FUNERAL:

“My wife and I flew into New York on a Friday night, and the next day we went to the funeral. I was writing [my eulogy] on the plane, in the limo, in bed. It was important. When I first walked into that church, it was electric, man. … I started [speaking] with the idea that sometimes what you think life will be it won’t be at all, and about what was real between Whitney and me, what we talked about—being in church when we were little, both getting in trouble, about our not wanting to be preachers. … I wanted to impart a bit of the Whitney that I knew, and maybe people could think about her in a different way.”

ON SENSING HOUSTON’S VULNERABILITY:

“Oh, yes. I tried to identify it in my eulogy. … I think about Whitney a little bit the way I think about the Kennedys. I know there’s trouble, but I choose to think about a lot of other stuff. The trouble is as real as the achievement, but it does not tarnish it.”

ON WHETHER HE STILL PRAYS:

“Yes, because I realize I have been very lucky. I feel that there has been a hand over my life. I haven’t lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that’s from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them. When I see my children, and when I see the people who value me, I know how lucky I am. … And so I give thanks for the life I’ve lived. I want to live forever, and I know I won’t. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m only afraid of one thing: not being able to raise my kids. When I pray, that’s what I pray for—that I be the one who raises Grace, Hayes, and Cayden.

ON HOLDING OFF FILMING THE BODYGUARD FOR A YEAR TO WAIT FOR HOUSTON:

“You don’t do that for everybody. And it was a pretty seminal moment for Whitney. I was told that the movie made a big impression on the black community because I took Whitney in my arms and kissed her, not as a black woman but as a beautiful woman. That’s how I saw her.”

Love.this.guy.