“When I read the actual story-how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can't ever be with her no matter how hard he tries-I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.”

“Instead he thinks up the worst ending imaginable: Hemingway has Catherine die fromhemorrhaging after their child is stillborn. It is the most torturous ending I have everexperienced and probably will ever experience in literature, movies, or even television.I am crying so hard at the end, partly for the characters, yes, but also because Nikkiactually teaches this book to children. I cannot imagine why anyone would want toexpose impressionable teenagers to such a horrible ending. Why not just tell high schoolstudents that their struggle to improve themselves is all for nothing?”

“People can be cruel,' he says with a sympathetic look that makes me trust him even more. And right then I realize that he is not writing down all my words in a file, which I really appreciate, let me tell you.”

“I believe in happy endings," I tell him, "And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”

“I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.”

“In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me - in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.”

“But the next time Nikki eats too many crabby snacks, I am going to tell her she did not eat too much and that she looks too skinny anyway; I'll say she needs to gain a few pounds because I like my women looking like women and not like 'Ms. Six O'Clock-straight up, straight down,' which is another term I learned from Danny.”