I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.

I like this world. I like drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like Dutch people speaking Dutch.

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.

Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

The five of us walking confidently in a row, I'd never felt cooler. The Great Perhaps was upon us, and we were invincible. The plan may have had faults, but we did not.

When it works, anticipation is far more fulfilling than surprise, because we are reminded that a sunrise is precisely as magnificent as it is inevitable.

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