It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed up or distorted or whatever.

All salvation is temporary

And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body, this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors.

She left me enough to rediscover the Great Perhaps.

A small olive-skinned creature who had hit puberty but never hit it very hard, Ben had been my best friend since fifth grade, when we both finally owned up to the fact that neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend.

I think it's crazy, crazy that book tours lose so much money. They shouldn't. Book tours should be part of what keeps independent bookstores vibrant and profitable.