I dislike the phrase ‘Internet friends,’ because it implies that people you know online aren’t really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.

God will punish the wicked. And before He does, we will.

So why don't you go home for vacations?' I asked her. I'm just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

maybe she'd been scared of being paralyzed by fear again.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

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