“Maybe I was being naive. Even stupid. I mean, who would trade Standford for being homeless? [...] But I had to know if I was meant to be a musician. Otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life regretting it. Asking myself... what if?”

“If I could make you happy, then I'd be a prince. If I could get you to love me, then I'd be a king. If I could spend the rest of my life loving you, then I'd be in heaven. And now that I have you here, knowing that you are happy and that I'm the reason, knowing that you love me, and knowing that I will spend the rest of my life loving you, I understand what it truly means to be blessed.”

“...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy.”

“i wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself..”

“As I helped him up, I felt him shake all over, so I asked him to forgive me, without knowing what for, but that was my lot, asking forgiveness, I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.”

“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”