“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”

“But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.”

“I renamed myself Ari.If I switched the letter, my name was Air.I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”

“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”

“I don't like remembering. Remembering makes me feel things. I don't like feeling things.”

“I ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.”

“I don't like remembering.Remembering makes me feel things.I don't like to feel things.I'm thinking I could spend the rest of my life becoming an expert at forgetting”