I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance.

I have guts, just not when it counts.

It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.

I have an Augustus Waters fetish.

And as we kept driving north, the whole family in the care together, it got darker, and snowier, until finally the road delivered us to the one place that all my youthful trips west never could: home.

It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.