You know, Michael, I used to sit around looking for a way to make sense of what happened, like there was some kind of answer I could find if I just looked hard enough. Then one day I realized that if there had been one, Dave would still be here. And I wondered if this...this feeling that I couldn't figure it all out...was what Dave had been feeling, too.

I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you

You saved me," I said. Nathaniel put his hands on either side of my face. "I had to," he said. "So you could save me back.

When heaven breaks, who fixes it?

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.