And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body, this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors.

I think about how much depends upon a best friend. Then you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it's not.

You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.

I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.

what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated. do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s happy, and to have not a single person recognize it

Anyway, that was the last good day I had with Gus until the Last Good Day.

Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.