“I hated Pinocchio. I think I was the only one in the class who hated him. Pinocchio was alive, but that was not enough for him. He could walk and talk and touch things in the real world, but he spent the whole book wanting more.Pinocchio didn’t know how lucky he was.”

“I didn't want him to think I was weak, but he was the only person in the whole world who had any idea of the real predicament I was in, and that made him, at the moment, my best friend, even though he was about as comforting as a catcus.”

“It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?”

“The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.”

“You want me to invite him to dinner.” “I want you to invite him to dinner,” she agreed. “You know,” he said, “most gay men don’t have mothers who are this enthusiastic about their love lives.” “That’s probably true,” she said. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

“No matter what happens, I don’t think that anyone will remember me when I disappear. It will be like I was never here. There will be no proof that I ever existed … you can’t be sad if you disappear, because disappeared people can’t feel sad. They can only be remembered or forgotten.”

“The world can be so complicated for Max. Even when he gets something right, it can still go wrong.”