We all have a blind spot and it's shaped exactly like us.

If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly possible.

It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion.

Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

Poor Oscar. Without even realizing it he'd fallen into one of those Let's Be Friends Vortexes, the bane of nerdboys everywhere. These relationships were love's version of a stay in the stocks, in you go, plenty of misery guaranteed and what you got out of it besides bitterness and heartbreak nobody knows. Perhaps some knowledge of self and women.

You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again

but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.