And then we were kissing.....The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I rally like my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle.

I'm a grenade, I just want to stay away from people and read books, and think.

We were kissing. I thought: This is good. I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad at all. I thought: I am clearly the greatest kisser in the history of the universe. Suddenly she laughed and pulled away from me. She wiggled a hand out of her sleeping bag and wiped her face. "You slobbered on my nose," she said, and laughed

How are the eyes?' 'Oh, excellent,' he said. 'I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.

Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

There are at least two distinct meanings of 'hot': there is the, like, normal human definition which is that 'this individual seems suitable for mating'. And then there's the weird, culturally constructed definition of 'hot' which means, 'that individual is malnourished and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts'. Like, I think if you went back to the 18th century and asked a 15-year-old boy, 'Would you like to marry a woman who has had plastic bags needlessly inserted into her breasts?' that 15-year-old boy would probably be like ... 'What's plastic?'