Yeah, so if that guy can make it in drunk, surely we can make it in sober. I mean, we’re ninjas.' 'Well, maybe you’re a ninja,' I said. 'You’re just a really loud, awkward ninja,' Margo said, 'but we are both ninjas.

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

Mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'I don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless...

I ran like a cheetah - well, like a cheetah that smoked too much.

When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, 'you like stuff.' Which is not a good insult at all, like, 'you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human conscience.

I don't think we should see the world of books as fundamentally separate from the world of the Internet. Yes, the Internet contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, but it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about books.

I am a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you: You're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? "I'm going to go to my room and read for awhile, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine: I just want to go read for a while.