Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way.

I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.

She said Robert Joyner had killed himself with a gun. And then I asked why, and then she told me that he was getting a divorce and was sad about it.' 'Lots of people get divorces and don't kill themselves,' I said. 'I know,' she said, excitement in her voice. 'That's what I told her.

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.

Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.