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...

contiguous, adj.I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain. “When I was a kid, “I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it–you know, the...

Feelings don’t follow rules. Guilt does. Fear does. But attraction? No way.

It’s hard being in the body of someone you don’t like, because you still have to respect it.

Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely...

I wake up feverish, sore, uncomfortable.Is it sickness or is it heartbreak?I can’t tell.The thermometer says I’m normal, but I’m clearly not.

Now I just want it to end. I’ve always wanted the happy ending, but now I’ll just settle for the ending.

teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say “I wish someone would drop a bomb on this...

The world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong.

They are so caught up in their happiness that they don’t realize I’m not really a part of it. I am wandering along the periphery. I am like the people in the Winslow Homer paintings,...

Whatever you had — I don’t know what it was, and that’s fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that’s okay. But you have to figure that if it’s...

I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.

Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.

If she were running through the rye, if she were headed towards the abyss, I would grab hold with every ounce of my strength, with every scared beat of my heart, with every thought that...

Courage. I need courage. Because this is surely the stupidest idea in the history of guys liking girls.

We always underestimated our own participation in magic. That is, we thought of magic as something that existed with or without us. But that’s not true. Things are not magical because they’ve been conjured for...

The question is there in each silence. The question is there in the space between you. But you cannot bring it aloud.

We all want everything to be okay. We don’t even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.

He treats his body like it’s made of fireworks, each one timed to the beat. Is he dancing alone or dancing with everyone in the room? Here’s the secret: It doesn’t matter.

I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing.

Doubt is an acceptable risk for happiness.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they’ve lived...

My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

ardent, adj.It was after sex, when there was still heat and mostly breathing, when there was still touch and mostly thought… it was as if the whole world could be reduced to the sound of...

No, really,’ I said. ‘I think she’s great. And I honestly like her about twenty more times now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future. And Sofia and...

The world was full of waistrels and waifs, sycophants and spies – all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect

No. I don’t. You don’t always have to be who they want you to be, you know.

I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got to be her. She got to live...

Because that’s the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of...

It’s been said of me that I know how to love well, if any person alive can possess such knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us.It is all such a...

I try to convince myself that it’s the alcohol talking. But alcohol can’t talk. It just sits there. It can’t even get itself out of the bottle.