I wish I didn’t have a heart that God wrote Sad on.

Do it for therapy. You can go to art school later.

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

I wondered what it was like to feel whole, to not feel torn up or stunned out or wigged out or any of those things. I wondered what it was like to walk around the...

I had to be the world’s biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would...

¨Someday, I’m going to have to break some of your rules, Mom.¨¨I know,¨ she said. ¨Try to do it behind my back, will you?¨¨You can bet on that, Mom.¨We both sat there and laughed.

The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the...

I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.

Dad? Dad, no. No. I can’t. I can’t. Why are you saying these things?””Because I can’t stand watching all that loneliness that lives inside you.

What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat’s so great about a life that’s sober?There’s nothing cool about being youngWhen the...

I’m not a good kid. Yeah, look, I’m just a piece of paper with the word sad and a bunch of cuss words written on it.A lousy piece of paper. That’s me.A piece of paper...

I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn’t like feeling like that.

See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much work. I mean, I say that word as if it clearly articulates what I’m really feeling....

I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.

For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.

He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he’d rather be kissing boys. That’s exactly what he said. I didn’t know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to...

Rafael?””Yeah?”„Do we all have monsters?”„Yes.”„Why does God give us so many monsters?”„You want to know my theory?”„Sure.”„I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

The heart can get really cold if all you’ve known is winter.

Words could be like food – they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

I couldn’t exactly storm away in anger. I’d just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe.

The problem with parents is that they’re adults.

Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.

Some boys… Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful.

Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and...

I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

I mean, okay, let’s say we’re all going to get better. Let’s just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all...

See, this is the way I see it. Not all anger is the same. Because there are different kids of anger. And you know what else – sometimes, anger is a virtue. As long as...

You’re fighting this war in the worst way possible.” “I don’t know how to fight it, Dad.””You should ask for help,” he said.”I don’t know how to do that, either.

But the thing is, I didn’t make my friends happy and they didn’t make me happy. All we did was get stoned out of our minds. That didn’t have anything to do with happiness.

I thought of what my mom had said. “You talk like a man.” It was easier to talk like a man than to be one.

Summer was a book of hope. That’s why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.

Healthy people have healthy boundaries. Unhealthy people, well, let’s not get into that. It’s like this: some people have walls which means they let no one in. This equals unhealthy. Some people let everyone in...

I was fifteen.I was bored.I was miserable.

i have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we’re thinking about things that we don’t know we’re thinking about-and those things,well,they sneak out of us in our dreams.Maybe we’re like tires...

That was the first time I did coke.My body, it was electric. For the first time in my life I felt as if I had a real heart and a real body and I knew...

Listen, the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip. You can’t takeThe freeway. Back roads, buddy, that’s all you got. Unpaved back roadsAnd bad weather. Storms, baby. Don’t expect to get there fast....

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.

Yeah, that would be okay,” he said.

Feeling sorry for myself was an art.

What is it with you and that book?”Rafael laughed. “We have a personal relationship.

I guess I did miss Dante-even though i tried hard to not think about him.The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.

He tried not to laugh, but he wasn’t good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.

He looked tired but at that moment, as we sat at the kitchen table, there was something young about him. And I thought that maybe he was changing into someone else. Everyone was always becoming...

I also knew I had inherited the name of the world’s most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn’t give.So I renamed myself Ari.If I switched the letter,...

One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same.

One of my roommates, Rafael, he’s an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a...

I guess I didn’t have it so bad.Maybe everybody didn’t love me,but i wasn’t one of those kids that everyone hated,either.I was good in a fight.So people left me alone.i was almost invisible.i think i...

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.