And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

It's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.

I've never known before what it feels like to want someone - not to want to hook up with them or whatever, but to want them, to want them. And now I do. So maybe I do believe in epiphanies.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.

If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything.