If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.

I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books - used we call them, in a way that we'd never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly

it is so unfair that he lives in ohio, because that should be close enough, but since neither of us drives and neither of us would ever in a million years say, 'hey, mom, do you want to drive me across indiana to see a boy?,' we're kind of stuck.

teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.

"I want you to spend the night," you said. And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it. If you had said, "Let's have sex," or "Let's go to my place," or even "I really want you," I'm not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did. But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it with you.

me: you know what sucks about love? o.w.g.: what? me: that it's so tied to the truth.

Maybe relationships could have fractals, too. And maybe the sense of loss was when you're becoming a fractal of what you once were to each other.