“I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.”

“It's a jagged thing in my throat, how much I miss her.”

“Ethan and I are done," I said finally."I'm sorry.""He was my first boyfriend.""I know.""The only real boyfriend I've had. I'm a senior in high school and he was my only real boyfriend.""I know.""And I won't find another one at Jones Hall. That is guaranteed.""Okay.""This is all very sad and tragic," I said.Alan unwrapped a sleeve of Smarties. "Yet, oddly, you don't seem that upset.""I know.”

“It's not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really see God, and know once and for all that everything I've believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn't lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home.”

“Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.”

“I don't yell back at my mother. When I'm angry or scared or upset, I don't yell. I stay quiet. I've seen how she is, how she would get with Kent and with me and with other people, life if someone at the pharmacy got in the wrong line or asked too long a question, or if someone on the bus accidentally bumped her. I've watched her my whole life, the way people react to her. It doesn't actually help you get what you want, yelling and being like that. It only makes people think bad of you.”

“He felt it too, the air between us, the invisible lines that something or someone had drawn to connect us. That's the way I remember it.”