My former people were not totally wrong. Love is a kind of possession. It’s a poison. And if Alex no longer loves me, I can’t bear to think that he might love somebody else.

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.