If smart people are parodying it, that's a sure sign that some less smart people are believing it.

Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

aloof, adj. It has always been my habit, ever since junior high school, to ask that question: “What are you thinking?” It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.

There is something so intimate about saying the truth out loud. There is something so intimate about hearing the truth said. There is something so intimate about sharing the truth, even if you are not entirely sure what it means.

New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.

Once you experience enormity, it lingers everywhere you look, and want to be every word you say.