“Nothing is as boring as other people's dreams.”

“You're not boring. You've got to stop saying that, or people will start believing you.”

“That's why people grow weary of listening to Dumpees obsess over their troubles: getting dumped is predictable, repetitive, and boring.”

“I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”

“Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children.”

“What's the meaning of life? Other people.”

“I don’t find our relative insignificance disheartening at all: The main thing it tells me is that in a culture that worships celebrity and the purportedly extraordinary, ALL people are ordinary people. ALL people have the same responsibilities to themselves and to each other. Maybe the universe cares nothing for us, but WE care about each other. And most encouragingly, we care not just for our friends or family but for the whole enterprise of life—we care about strangers and about humpback whales and, most beautifully of all, we care about the dead. We try with our lives to honor theirs. That’s how we make our lives meaningful, and how we make their lives meaningful, too.”