“You accept that people are the way they are. There's nothing you can do about it, exceptlearn ways to minimize the damage they can do to you. It's like rain. We don't feel a need to forgivethe sky for raining on a day when we really wanted sunshine, do we? No. We might be upset anddisappointed, but the need to forgive never enters our mind.”

“How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked.I looked at her not knowing how to reply.Mama, [...] how do we know that things are real?'Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.'But how do we know?' she asked, insistently.Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.We don't know. We just have to hope.'Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?'Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time.”

“Wouldn't it be better to go like this? If we live our lives as an adventure, there's only one proper way to end them. Don't you feel it? We're young and free and beautiful and brilliant and so perfectly alive. We're burning bright and fast, like supermassive stars, you know? And we can go supernova, ignite the whole sky in a fiery explosion when we die. Or we can just grow old, wither, let our outer layers float away as we wait for death to take us.”

“Ugh, my friend, you really need a breath mint,” I told him, sending a pulse of glamour into the brambly monster above me. “Let’s see what we can do about that doggie breath.”

“Every romantic movie with a grocery shopping scene had to have a baguette sticking out of the bag. And a bundle of flowers.”

“We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait... No matter what... pressure... you might feel.”

“Do I like you?No. I don't like you. I don't think about you every moment of every day. I never relive the way it felt to have your hand holding mine, to be so close to you I could smell you, feel the warmth of you, breathe the air that you breathe. I don't remember your arm around me, making me feel safe, special...WANTED.”