We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.

We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the technicolor of the moment.

Well, I agree that ‘trial and error’ is a pretty pessimistic name for it. And maybe that’s what it is most of the time. But I think the point is that it’s not just try-error....

This is the power of a kiss: It does not have the power to kill you. But it has the power to bring you to life.

I wanted love to conquer all. But love can’t conquer anything.

you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.

I want to talk to you and be random with you and be ridiculous with you.

Let’s always love each other, and never be in love with each other.

I was always thinking in terms of too much or not enough, rarely allowing myself that crucial space in between. Except when he was around. Except when we were really together. Then I could forget—I...

this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off.

The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster,...

In my kind of falling, there’s no landing. There’s only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you’re falling, it’s the worst feeling in the world. Because you...

I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can’t come from bad things,...

What a horrible feeling that is, to know that if the disease [AIDS] had primarily affected PTA presidents, or priests, or white teenage girls, the epidemic would have been ended years earlier, and tens of...

In an age of guidebooks, websites, and radio waves, discovery has nearly become a lost feeling. If anything, it is now a matter of expectations to surpass—rarely a matter of unexpected wonderment. It is unusual...

(Kindness) is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.”-David Levithan (Every Day)

happy to see me and unhappy to see me at the same time

You don’t realize – the great thing about change is how quickly we get used to it. So I’m not complaining. the more things change,the more they don’t stay the same. Don’t let anyone tell...

Ultimately, the universe doesn’t care about us. Time doesn’t care about us. That’s why we have to care about each other.

Either way, you were connected. By your desires. By your defiance. By the simple, complicated fact of who you were.

But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities....

I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong and my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave….If there’s no feeling of fear then there’s no need for courage.

The devil doesn’t make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.

look, tiny – i’m trying to be on my best behavior, but you have to understand – i’m always standing on the edge of something bad. and sometimes someone like you can make me look...

As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter. You up? he asks.And the reply comes instantly:For anything.

I didn’t let her go. She went. It’s not my fault.She did it.She could undo it. This is feeling so fucking famliar.Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such...

Yeah. Everybody has at least one.

It’s only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent...

It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it’s lonely, because you feel you can’t talk about it. You feel it’s something between you and the body. You feel it’s a...

tiny: did someone die?me: yeah, i did.he smiles again at that.tiny: well, then… welcome to the afterlife.

I want love to conquer all. But love can’t conquer anything. It can’t do anything on it’s own.It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.

Once time is lit, it will burn whether or not you’re breathing it in. Even after smoke becomes air, there is the memory of smoke. I am seeing as if by the light of a...

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.

In this space, in this moment, we are who we want to be. I am lucky, because for me that doesn’t take much courage. But for others, it takes a world of bravery to make...

What’s the point of all this magic, if no one really knows how to use it? But I guess the same could be said about life. Which is another form of magic, only less showy.

We switch to another language– not our invented language or the language we’ve learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time...

It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right.

i think the idea of a ‘mental health day’ is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it’s like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired...

does it ever get easier?is there an end to these questions?do you have any answers?will you say them to me?can you stop this unraveling?will you bring me your closure?or am I the only onewho sees...

The body is the easiest thing to adjust to… It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

There has to be a moment at the beginning where you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself. If the moment doesn’t pass, that’s it—you’re...

I want to have faith in strangers. I want to have faith in what we’re all going to do next. But I’m worried. I see things shifting from United We Stand to God Bless America....

I really want you,” I’m not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did. But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend...

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or...

i do not say ‘good-bye.’ i believe that’s one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it’s not like you’re given the choice to say ‘bad-bye’ or ‘awful-bye’ or ‘couldn’t-care-less-about-you-bye.’ every time you leave, it’s supposed...

I’m told there’s no going back. So I’m choosing forward.

I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this...

It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn’t be torn if the pages all held together.

I wake up.Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It’s not just the body—opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long...

Stupid arbitrary shit means it will take a movie star to die and a hemophiliac teenager to die before ordinary people start to mobilize, start to feel that the disease needs to be stopped. Tens...