I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

I was thinking about this girl you love so much," she said, "And this place I love so much. And how that happens. How you can just fall into it.

You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.

I still think that maybe the "afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe we are just matter, and matter gets recycled

We gotta do something about this frigging swing set,' he said. 'I'm telling you, it's ninety percent of the problem.

Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.

It's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.