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.

I felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything--just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past us as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them.

They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands.

As I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring.

The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.

I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.

That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.