I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I’ve never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero’s errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

He'd fought hard, Lida told me, as if there was another way to fight.

Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.

If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane.

I said nothing—I hadn’t known Marya, and anyway, “listening quietly” was my general social strategy

Are you currently at your house?" he asked. "Um, no," I said. "That was a trick question. I knew the answer, because I am currently at your house.

All the things paper-thin and paper-frail, and all the people too.