He let his mind wander. It went to a predictable place, and he missed her

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

The Venn Diagram of boys who don’t like smart girls and boys you don’t wanna date is a circle.

And I wrote my way out of the labyrinth.

Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.

I love you present tense,” I whispered, and then put my hand on the middle of his chest and said, “It’s okay, Gus. It’s okay. It is. It’s okay, you hear me?” I had—and have—absolutely no confidence that he could hear me. I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.