“That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”

“Something about telling that story made my gut grow back together."What?"Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud."That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of."The people who've been in your secret hiding places."The people you bite your thumb in front of."Hi."Hi."..."..."Wow. My first Lindsey."My second Colin."That was fun. Let's try it again."Sold."..."..."..."...”

“Could the two people who are making out please be quiet?" the Colonel asked loudly from his sleeping bag. "Those of us who are not making out are drunk and tired.”

“I think the idea of a 'mental heath day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. The idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kinds of like saying heart diseases can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. Mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'I don't want to deal with things today' and they can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.”

“See, popularity is complicated. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about liking; you have to really like being liked, and also sort like being disliked.”

“It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.”

“Son, if there's on thing I know," and Colin thought about how old people always like to tell you the one thing they know, "it's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”