So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.

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

His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life

Just spend a few more months playing video games. That hand-eye coordination will come in handy when you get to third base.

I don't see a future where we're all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable.

Nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed and when I'm writing, there are no bees to sting me out of my sentimentality. For me at least, fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we’re all constantly correcting each other’s grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they’re going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that’s precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication.