In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me.

It's over when you decide it's over," Norah says. "When you call it a night. The rest is just a matter of where the sun is in the sky. That has nothing to do with us.

I deciced if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be, 'Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you. . . . Are you perchance free this evening?

I'm liking that I can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it's too out there.

She doesn't want the boy causing the distinction between "love" and "in love

Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash. "I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks." "Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up. "You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said.