Failing to grapple with complexity actually turns out to be a pretty bad life strategy.

Was it animal pee or human pee? Someone asked. How would I know? What, am I an expert in the study of pee?

There's not even real *popularity* at my school." "That," Coli said emphatically, "is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.

it was not enough to be the last guy she kissed. i wanted to be the last one she loved.

Nothing to be gained by worrying between now and then.

The challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will matter to him or her. But the mechanics of going about that challenge change when you're collaborating, because you have someone to help refine your thinking and expand your vision of what might happen.

but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers