One of the pitfalls about writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise-beyond-their-years creatures or these sad-eyed tragic people. And the truth is, people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. They're every bit as funny and complex and diverse as anyone else.

I have spent my life falling. Not the kind that Tiny's talking about. He's talking about love. I'm talking about life. In my kind of falling, there's no landing. There's only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you're falling, it's the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.

C'mon Pudge. I'm teasing. You have to be tough. I didn't know how bad it was-- and I'm sorry, and they'll regret it-- but you have to be tough.

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.

I tried--I swear I tried. But you didn't want to hear what I was saying, and I used that as an excuse to let it go on.

Love is always a miracle, everywhere,every time. But for us, it's a little different. I don't want to say it's more miraculous,...It is though.