Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinetisimal change ripples outward —ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter —maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

There are times when you just have to let it all out. All the anger, all the pain.

Teenagers are extremely funny, and extremely clever and intellectually curious. But they're also willing to ask questions about the meaning of life without disguising them around irony, and ask questions about what are our responsibilities to other people without having to couch it in irony.

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.

Observation: It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while.

Shouldn't letting go be painless if you've never learned how to hold on?

You can't just make me different and then leave. You can't. You can't change me and make my whole life centered around you, then leave.