It’s not my fault I can’t be like you, okay? I don’t get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That’s just not how I work. I don’t think I can be fixed.

And you can’t love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

Maybe before you die, it’s your ghosts you see.

I was going to tell you that you look beautiful with your hair down. That’s all I was going to say.

I think of the quietness of Julian’s voice as he said I love you, the steadiness of his rib cage rising and falling against my back, as we sleep.I love you, Julian. But the words don’t come.

Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it.But for some of us there’s...

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things. It kills you.Alex.When you have it.Alex.And when you don’t.Alex.

And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and toldme there was a star for every thing you loved about me.” I’m gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I’m reaching for...

Why do you flirt with Mr. Daimler? He’s a perv, you know.”I’m so surprised by the question it takes me a second to answer. “Mr. Daimler is not a perv.””Trust me, he is.””Jealous?””Hardly.””I don’t flirt with him, anyway.”Kent rolls his eyes. “Sure.”I shrug my shoulders. “Why so interested?”Kent goes red and drops his eyes to...

Most of us won’t see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We’ll be different. We’ll be adults–cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.

Lord, help us root our feet to the earthAnd our eyes to the roadAnd always remember the fallen angelsWho, attempting to soar,Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting,Came crashing back to the sea.Lord, help root my eyes to the earthAnd stay my eyes to the roadSo I may never stumble.-Psalm 24 (From “Prayer...

Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.

Everyone you trust, everyone you think can count on, will eventually disappoint you. When left to their own devices, people lie and keep secrets and change and disappear…

But all you see is the crap. So you don’t have to believe in anything. So you’ll have an excuse to fail.

Who the hell calls at two in the morning?””Maybe it’s Matt Wilde, confessing his love,” Lindsay says.”Very funny,

If we could just float along, like snow.

What did Saturday’s used to taste like? Like eggs and fried ham and the bitter smell of hair in heavy rollers. Like long quiet hours and making up after a fight. Like ointment and bruising. Like waiting, especially, for something – anything – to happen.

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

God bless Dunkin’ Donuts.

It struck her how sad it was that all of them had grown up on top of one another like small animals in a too-small cage, and now would simply scatter. And that would be the end of that. Everything that had happened would be sucked away into memory and vapour, as though it hadn’t...

Look, I’m not going to have sex with him just so he’ll say that he loves me, you know?”…That isn’t why I was planning to have sex with Rob – to hear the words, I mean. I just wanted to get it over with. I think. Actually, I’m not sure why it seemed so important.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the...

He believed in people. He believed that if people could only be shown the right way-the way to health and order, a way to be free of unhappiness-they would make the right choice. They would obey.

Dance,” he says, at the same time closing those last few inches and finding my hand and pulling me closer, and at that second the song hits a high note and I confuse the two impressions, of his hand and the soaring, the lifting of the music.We dance.

I thought I would never see the sky again. Anything, anything is possible, if you can just see the sky.

We’ll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.

If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happened for me.

Of course. That’s what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.

Home is where I built my life.- Henry Morbower

Are you sure that being like everyone else will make you happy?

I thought if I had a party, you would come.

This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn’t love. If we didn’t lose either. If we didn’t get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn’t have to patch and repatch until we’re like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn...

Don’t worry about what you’re writing or whether it’s good or even whether it makes sense.

And when I wake up it’s wonderful, like I’ve been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.

Everything has taken on a strange, distant quality – the sounds of running and shouting outside get warped and weird like they’re being filtered through water, and Alex looks miles away. I start to think I might be dreaming, or about to pass out. And then I decide I’m definitely dreaming, because as I’m watching,...

This is one of my favorite things about the Underground: the crashing of the cymbals, the screeching guitar riffs, music that moves into the blood and makes you feel hot and wild and alive.

Someday all the wilds will be razed, and we will be left with a concrete landscape, a land of pretty houses and trim gardens and planned parks and forests, and a world that works as smoothly as a clock, neatly wound: a world of metal and gears, and people going tick-tick-tick to their deaths.

Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You’re only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking.

She knew that this day, this feeling, couldn’t last forever. Everything passed; that was partly why it was so beautiful. Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too.The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

I reached and ran a finger along her collarbones, my favorite place: like the silhouette of tiny wings.

Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?”Sometimes.”So why don’t you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.’But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?

I’ve learned to get really good at this – say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when I’m really freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older

Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.

All of it was hers, hers and Nat’s, and all those years were nestled inside them like one of those Russian dolls, holding dozens of tiny selves inside it.

The air is still and freezing cold. The sky is a perfect, pale blue. The sun has just risen, weak and watery-looking, like it has just spilled itself over the horizon and it’s too lazy to clean itself up.

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.