“I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”

“If she'd been bleeding in the street, you would've run to get help. It's the same thing!""Typical," I could hear you saying back. "The whole point is that I wasn't bleeding in the street . I wasn't dying of cancer. You couldn't take an X-ray and see what was wrngsithme. You couldn't make such an easy diagnosis. You had to guess. And everybody guessed wrong."But the things is, I hadn't even made the guess. I trusted that you knew what you were doing.You were very convincing.And I destroyed you.”

“It's not the easy things that let you get to know a person.”

“Like most of Salinger's characters, she wouldn't be such a fuckup, you felt, if these fucked-up things didn't keep happening to her. ...We believe in the wrong things, I wrote, using the same pen Boomer had used on his arm. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”

“I don't mean that God made this happen to teach us something. Or to teach me something. How monstrously selfish would that be? I just mean that if we go through this thing and it changes us so much, you have to hope that it changes us for the better, right? If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”

“candid, adj."Most times, when I'm having sex, I'd rather be reading."This was, I admit, a strange thing to say on a second date.I guess I was just giving you a warning."Most times when I'm reading," you said, "I'd rather be having sex".”

“But when it seems insurmountable, I need reminders like this that you can get used to it. That it can take on the comfort of the right choice. That lasting things do, in fact, last.”