“Because one day I'll leave you a phantom to lead you in the summer to join the black parade”

“There's always a parade, Howie. When it's something you can't ever join but only watch, then it's a parade”

“Well, you know, life marches on. And sometimes we have to join the parade whether we want to or not.”

“Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer — that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with people you’d left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn’t love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.”

“Can you get a summer snow-globe instead of a winter one with green grass and flowering azalea bushes and blue sky? Because I'm here, inside it. If you shake it, perhaps it fills with black smoke, not swirling snowflakes.”

“You have to lead every day to be a leading light,not in a time of light between one night and the next.”