That is what Alex is now: a shadow-boy

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.

This is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.

Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?

Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose. We are even free to choose the wrong thing.

It's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.