“i don't need you. i never needed you.""well, i fucking needed you!”

“You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.”

“You came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you'd been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you. [...] I said that next time, you had to take me with you.""Was there a next time?""Well, you tell me, you don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”

“I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.”

“No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.”

“You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”

“Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you”