“All I want, oh dear friend of mine, is for you to go out with someone. Do something, even if it's not the magical, wonderful thing you had in mind. Don't sit around for one more second pining away for some fantasy that might never come along, because it might not even exist.”

“I am not going to do anything with you: not if you mean by that 'do something to you' without your leave. We might do some things together. I don't know about sides. I go my own way; but your way may go along with mine for a while.”

“There are always worse things waiting. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces all your nightmares into a freakish horror that actually exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind will snap at the sight of it, and you will know no more. But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that all the joy has gone out of the world for you, you might wish you were the one who was dead - but you go on. You might realize that you are in a hell of your own making, but you go on nevertheless. Because there is nothing else to do.”

“I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.”

“This is a cruel thing to do because when someone knows your story they know you. And they can hurt you. It's why I give mine away in pieces, even to Cassia.”

“Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.”