Where do you go when you die? Ha ha. Go on, go on and tell her, Billy." Billy smiles. "You become a little voice in someone's ear telling them that things will be alright.

I don't like the fact that no one has any imagination anymore. It doesn't pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone. Nobody wants you to think about anything new or use your brain or make anything interesting because everything important has already been made. America is over; it's done being brilliant.Everything genius has already been built, like all the great works of art have already been produced.

The longer human beings exist, it seems, the less likely we are to choose to be brave.

Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.

Imagination is a place where all the important answers live.

[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.