“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.”

“Did the thought ever occur to you that I might care about you? People are allowed to care about each other." "You don't know me well enough to care about me." "Let me clue you in on something, Andres. Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean that I have to hate you.”

“Dogs don't censor themselves. Maybe animals were smarter than people. The dog was so happy. My mom and dad too. It felt good to know that they loved the dog, that they let themselves do that. And somehow it seemed that the dog helped us be a better family.”

“This is my theory: the people who shouldn't hate themselves, do hate themselves. And the people who should hate themselves, don't hate themselves. The world is all backwards. See, this is one of the many reasons why God and I are not good friends.”

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

“And every time I did spectacularly well in my classes, and I'm here to tell you that I did spectacularly well, I could always see the look of surprise on my professors' faces. You don't think I noticed? What you saw on Dave's face, I saw every damned day of my academic career. So what, Andres? I wanted to do something, to be something - and I did it. I don't think I deserve a medal, and I don't think I'm particularly special. I wanted to do something, and I figured out a way to do it.”

“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.”