At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too.

...It sounded like a dragon breathing in time with me, like I had this pet dragon who was cuddled up next to me and cared enough about me to time his breaths to mine.

Being a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people.

Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.

My days had a pleasant identicalness about them. I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to but I did.

My thoughts are starts I can't fathom into constellations.

I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)