I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up," he said. "And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you," I said.

You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.

Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of the stars to cross.

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.

…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.

Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.

We're professional worriers. You're constantly imagining things that could go wrong and then writing about them.