“Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.”

“I wonder idly how long i can go without sleep before I flip my shit and start running down the street in my underwear, hallicinating purple spiders.”

“For a second something deep and old rises inside me and I could fall on the ground and weep for joy, or open up my arms and spin. After being enclosed for so long, I want to drink in all the space, all the bright, empty air stretching around me on all sides.”

“Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.”

“Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration. The flood that rushed into Portland twenty years ago after nearly two months of straight rain, that hurtled up beyond the labs and damaged more than a thousand houses, swept up tire and trash bags and old, smelly shoes and floated them through the streets like prizes, that left a thin film of green mold behind, a stench of rotting and decay that didn't go away for months, began with a trickle of water, no wider than a finger, lapping up onto the docks. And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a thought. Grace's life fell apart because of a single word: sympathizer. My world exploded because of a different word: suicide. Correction: That was the first time my world exploded. The second time my world exploded, it was also because of a word. A word that worked its way out of my throat and danced onto and out of my lips before I could think about it, or stop it. The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes.”

“Standing there in-between two disgusting Dumpsters in some crappy alleywith the whole world crumbling down around me, and hearing Alex say thosewords, all the fear I have carried with me since I learned to sit, stand, breathe—since I was told that at the very heart of me was something wrong, somethingrotten and diseased, something to be suppressed—since I was told that I wasalways just a heartbeat away from being damaged—all of it vanishes at once.That thing—the heart of hearts of me, the core of my core—stretches and unfurlseven further, soaring like a flag: making me feel stronger than I ever have before.”

“Most of the time one night blends into the next and weeks blend into weeks and months into other months. And sooner or later we all die. But at the beginning of the night anything’s possible.”