I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don't follow those rules, they can't be part of the gang.

Now I just have these reddish scars there. I guess I always will, although Goody says they’ll fade over time. I don’t know if I want them to fade. That probably sounds totally freaky, but part of me doesn’t want to forget what it felt like, even though it hurt. If I forget about the pain, I might also forget that it was a really stupid idea to do it in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didn’t die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesn’t seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don’t feel lucky. For one thing, I’m stuck in this pit. And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.

Once you realise there's nothing to be afraid of when you die, there's nothing else to worry about.

I swear, sometimes it feels like there's this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I'm sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I'm thinking about bears.

That's what people do. Kill the things they're afraid of.

One time Allie and I skipped school and went to see this foreign film called Los Diablos, where these villagers found a glowing blue ball and peeled pieces off of it to see what was inside. Only the ball was really radioactive, and they all died from the poison. I think that’s what happens when you look too deep inside for the truth. The poison comes out, and you die, even though you have beautiful glowing pieces of blue truth in your fingers.