The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.

And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.

Books are like tweets, except longer.

In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

“I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.” “Someone should tell Jesus,” I said. “I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.” “I would tell Him myself.” Augustus said, “but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won't be able to hear me.”

All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.

Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.