Everyone's scared. So scared they can't sleep sometimes. Or eat. Or keep their weight on." "Then why bother playing?" I asked. It was a whisper, this question. "Because. You love the game. You love the people you play with. You love winning, maybe. You love that one moment when you get it right . . . I dunno. Why do you play?" "Because," I whispered, "it's who I am." Sounds like a good reason to me.

Sometimes,well,all the time,I can't think of what to say because I'm so dumb and stuff,and then maybe I think of it like five days later.

I swear, every person I know gets far more satisfaction from doing good deeds than receiving them. Maybe that’s the whole point in the end, all of us putting up with good deeds, tolerating them as best we can, counting the minutes until we have the opportunity to reciprocate.

It was like he was in a contest to see who could do the least work, only he was the only contestant.

When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.

I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.

So what if Brian made me feel like fireworks were going off inside me. He could also make me feel like a big fat clod of heartsick dirt. It was like he could take any emotion I had and make it ten times stronger. Which is great when it's happiness but pretty darn awful if it's anything sad.