“The abbreviated exam week meant that Wednesday was the last day of school for us. And all day long, it was hard not to walk around, thinking about the lastness of it all.”

“Anyway, that was the last good day I had with Gus until the Last Good Day.”

“There's no way of knowing that your last good day is Your Last Good Day. At the time, it is just another good day.”

“If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight for the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.”

“I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.”

“I'd had nearly four years of experience looking at these clocks, but their sluggishness never ceased to surprise. If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight to the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.”

“With all the planning she’d done, she must have known she was leaving, and even she couldn’t have been totally immune to the feeling. She’d had good days here. And on the last day, the bad days become so difficult to recall, because one way or another, she made a life here, just as I had. The town was paper, but the memories were not. All the things I’d done here, all the love and pity and compassion and violence and spite, kept welling up inside me. These whitewashed cinder-block walls. My white walls. Margo’s white walls. We’d been captive in them for so long, stuck in their belly like Jonah.”