Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

Anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once, you know?

If I had cared about her as I should have, as I thought I did, how could I have let her go?

It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.

There's your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze.

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I’ve always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel.