She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.

If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.

In the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Of course I tensed up when he touched me. To be with him was to hurt him-inevitably. And that's what I'd felt as he reached for me: I'd felt as though I were committing an act of violence against him, because I was.

I do, Augustus. I do.

You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.