“Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.”

“Memory can refuse to let you forget what you’d like to and run away with what you want to remember. It’s an unreliable bitch, or your best friend. Sometimes, it’s both at once.”

“Sometimes,” he said after a second that lasted a million years, “things get broken. And they can’t be fixed.”

“From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”

“It’s okay to struggle to find our place in this world and the person who will take us for who and what we are. Sometimes we dress ourselves in layers that only get peeled away in the end, to leave us as we should be.”

“They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.”His tone was light but his expression serious.Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.”Maybe it’s all they want to see.”

“Sometimes when you break things, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what's broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing”