I'm always standing on the edge of something bad.

exemplar, n. It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done. You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.

That's the problem with having a moral code. We want to destroy the jerkish part of the jerks, but we want to save the human being underneath.

He’ll have to prove it to you. Every day, he’ll have to prove he’s worthy of you. And if he doesn’t, that’s it. But I think he will.

If you want to be loved, be a lovable. It's a good place to start.

You know, I'd get a tattoo with your name on it. Only, I want you to have the freedom to change your name if you want to.

There was a pause. I was still scared by every gap in our conversation, fearing that this was it, the point where we had nothing left to say. I was still trying to impress you, and I still wanted to be impressed by you, so I could pass along pieces of your impressiveness to my friends, convincing myself this was possible.