“I just stare at him. I want to ask him a thousand questions, but I can tell he doesn't want to be asked. "We make weird friends," I say instead."I've never been into the f-word with people.""I'm privileged, then? Why me?"He thinks for a moment and shrugs again."You're the realest person I've ever known.""Is that good or bad?""It's fucking awful. There's not much room for bullshit, and you know how I thrive on it."We laugh for a moment and begin walking again.”

“There will be no 'one day,'" I yell. "Because holidays are over, Griggs, and you and I are never going to cross paths again. Not in the next ten days. Not ever! Have a fantastic life.[...]"Be careful what you wish for," he says with quiet menace, "because I'm about this close to telling you to get the fuck out of my life."I stare at him."What do you want from me?" he asks.What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.More.”

“Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.But no one does.”

“Do you miss being friends with Santangelo?" I ask her after the lights are out and we're almost asleep."What makes you think were friends?""Everything."I hear her yawn."Being enemies with him is better." she tells me. There's a long pause and I think she's going to say something more but she doesn't and it's just silence for a long while.”

“He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here.”

“We look at each other for a moment and for once I feel awkward. It's not that I'm not into humility; I've just never had to practise it.”

“He stares at the them, mid mouthful. 'Please,' he says, after he's swallowed. 'It's bad enough that the middle-aged are having sex, without thinking of my aunt doing it. And I don't know why someone just doesn't tell Sam to use a condom instead of impregnating the women of the inner-west.”