“I don’t know what your type is. I don’t know what your deal is. I don’t even know if you have a boyfriend. I know I like you and I want to be in yourlife, that’s it, and if you have any room for a boyfriend, I would like to be your boyfriend, and if you don’t have any room, I would like to be your friend.Any room you have for me in your life is great. If you would like me to start out in one room and move to another, I could do that.”

“I was somebody's boyfriend now. This would mean a lot of trial and error. But she was who I wanted to try and err with.”

“I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, ‘The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.’ My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It’s like he’s reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I’ve been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I’m spinning through the same sounds I’ve been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I’ll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste,’ and I didn’t want to waste mine.”

“Boyfriend?” He was smiling slightly.Karl rolled his eyes. “Not if you’re going to be like that about it.”“What, happy?” Aiden teased. “You supposed to want your boyfriend to be happy, you know.”“I want you to be happy,” Karl muttered. “I just don’t want you to be a smug little bastard about it.”

“Do you have your own room, Charlie Brown?""Oh, yes... I have a very nice room.""I hope you realize that you won't always have your own room... Someday you'll get drafted or something, and you'll have to leave your room forever!""Why do you tell me things like that?""It's on a list I've made up for you... I call it, Things You Might As Well Know!”

“I didn't know what I was. I didn't have a noun.”

“You lose a certain type of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness.”