“We tried to act familiar, which meant we couldn't ask the kind of questions that might have helped us figure each other out and year after year the distance grew.”

“Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.”

“Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.”

“I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.”

“And we clung to each other like we were drowning because, in a way, we were.”

“I just feel like we understood each other.""Oh," says Rob, and nods kind of stiffly."Wait," says Jael. "Are you, like, jealous of a telepathic ram?”

“One day we ran all the way to Jones Beach, and if Mrs. Sidman hadn't sent a bus after us, I think we would have collapsed on the boardwalk and died.”