“You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine.”

“When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers.Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”

“My heart is really pounding," I said."That's how you know you're having fun," Margo said.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, your parents never have to know, though. The school doesn't want your parents to think you became a fuckup here any more than you want your parents think you're a fuckup.”

“You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.”

“How about I call you when I finish this?”“But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said.“I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.”He broke out into that goofy smile. “A nd you say we don’t know each other.”

“I know it's a bit self-aggrandizing.""Hey, you're stealing my eulogy," Isaac said. "My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard.”