“Wow. I feel like in this riot of people, I have been kicked in the stomach, but by the giddy police. Forget about the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.”

“I knew she was leaving. I knew we were never going to date long-distance. I knew that we wouldn't have been able to be like this back when were were dating, so there was no use in regretting what hadn't happened. I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present... ..It was snowing outside, anointing the air with a quiet wonder shared by all passersby. When I got back to my mother's apartment, I was a mixture of giddy thrill-happiness and muddle gut-confusion-- I didn't want to leave anything regarding Sofia to chance, and at the same time I was enjoying this step away from it.”

“It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn't about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”

“It's moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.I'm told there's no going back. So I’m choosing forwardThe exhaustion of living was just too much for me to talk any longerIt still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millionsWhy is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? Why do we feel we need that disconnect in order to connect?I had done it. I had embraced danger. The experience might have been an epic disaster, but it was still…an experienceWe are reading the story of our lives/ as though we were in it, /as though we had written itLike dogs and lions, small children can sense fear. The slightest flinch, the slightest disinclination, and they will jump atop you and devour youI might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to sayIn a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don’t want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle…It’s only a game if there is an absence of meaning. And we’ve already gone too far for thatYou restore my faith in humanity Do you want to go get coffee or something tomorrow and discuss and analyze the situation at length?Let’s just wander and see what happensIt was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.Fate has a strange way of making plansI love a man who doesn’t let go of the leash, even when it leads him to ruin”

“I feel like you may be a special and kind person. And I would like to make it my business to know special and kind people. Especially if they are boys my age.”

“I was coming down off the last painkiller left in my dresser drawer after Autumn tossed my stash. In that moment I was so groggy and happy I would have accepted a date with Oscar the Grouch - and planned to do some serious feeling up on the green furry beast too. Yeah, stooping to pharmaceutical-inspired sex fantasies about garbage can Sesame Street characters - that had to be the best Just Say No drug lecture a girl in a leg cast could ever receive to make her go cold turkey off the meds.”

“Why do adults think every girl who isn’t some overachieving nitwit needs to be reassured about her intelligence? Folks, my self-esteem is just fine, thanks. I may not be school smart, and I may do extremely stupid things sometimes, but I know I’m smart. And I’d give me some serious Vegas odds to kick the ass of Sarah Scholar at life-skills moral combat any day.”