“I call my mom from the car. I tell her that Neutral Milk Hotel is playing at the Hideout and she says, "Who? What? You're hiding out?" And then I hum a few bars of one of their songs and Mom says, "Oh, I know that song. It's on the mix you made me," and I say, "Right," and she says, "Well you have to be back by eleven," and I say, "Mom this is a historical event. History doesn't have a curfew," and she says, "Back by eleven," and I say, "Fine. Jesus," and then she has to go cut cancer out of someone.”

“Tobin," Mom said disapprovingly. She wasn't a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally - I mean, you don't want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, "Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, 'What'll ya have?' And the guy says, 'Whaddya got?' And the bartender says, 'I don't know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma.”

“Pudge/Colonel: "I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself. But then even after I wasn't mad anymore, I still didn't say anything, and I don't even really know why. Pudge had that kiss, I guess. And I had this secret. You've mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night, I'd stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, amd I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mother's grave on the anniversary but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early-too wintry. That's how I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide. She was so sad, and I didn't know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldn"t. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didn't know she was going to go. She was drunk just trashed drunk, and I really didn't think she would drive or anything. I thought she would just cry herself to sleep and then drive to visit her mom the next day or something. She walked away, and then I heard a car start. I don't know what I was thinking. So I let her go too. And I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to." Takumi”

“I picked up a lot of my arguing-with-Mom techniques from Mimsy. She always says if you state the facts, Mom won't argue with you. And it's true. I used this approach once when I was little, after I got home from a visit with Mimsy. I wanted to eat a chocolate bar for a snack but mom wanted me to have an apple. I refused, saying I have never had a bad candy bar but have had plenty of bad apples. Mom relented and let me have my chocolate. But not before saying, "All right. No bad apples for the bad apple." It was still worth it.”

“Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, "I won't be a mom anymore." It gutted me pretty badly.”

“Best day of my life hasn't happened yet. But I know it. I see it every day. The best day of my life is the day I buy my mom a huge fucking house. And not just like out in the woods, but in the middle of Mountain Brook, with all the Weekday Warriors' parents. With all y'all's parents. And I'm not buying it with a mortgage either. I'm buying it with cash money, and I am driving my mom there, and I'm going to open her side of the car door and she'll getout and look at this house—this house is like picket fence and two stories and everything, you know—and I'm going to hand her the keys to her house and I'll say, 'Thanks.' Man, she helped fill out my application to this place. And she let me come here, and that's no easy thing when you come from where we do, to let your son go away to school. So that's the best day of my life.”

“I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and fuck Lara and fuck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.”