Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.

We just did an awesome job of not dying.

My stomach sank. JP had come so close. His immigrant parents had sacrificed so much.

The French verb aimer has two meanings. And that’s why he liked her, and loved her. She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

Shame about how we’re gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. It’s the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is “sodomy’’.

You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that wasn't made for them by navigating a playground that was.