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

“And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.”

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

“Why did I have to be a good boy just because I had a bad-boy brother? I hated the way my mom and dad did family math.”

“Man loneliness was much bigger than boy loneliness.”

“Dante and I were the last two boys in America who grew up without television.”

“For a few minutes I wished that Dante and I lived in the universe of boys instead of the universe of almost-men.”