My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action.

Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.

You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, the little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that was not built for them by navigating a playground that was. . . Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Pete Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.

Oh, my god," Augustus said. "i can't believe i have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes." "i was thirteen," i said again, although of course i was only thinking "crush crush crush crush crush". I was flattered but changed the subject immediately.

The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic

I have to tell you man, that my stalker meter is kind of registering in the red zone right now.