What's the meaning of life? Other people.

We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.

Throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect," which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible.

So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.

In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business—and I wanted to try to reflect that.

The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.