So why aren’t you living with your sister?” “She wanted to meet new people,” Cath said. “You make it sound like she broke up with you.

You look different. You look unsettling.’ ‘You look like you,’ he said. ‘You with the volume turned up.

It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon's and Baz's. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world.

She saw him after seventh hour in a place she'd never seen him before, carrying a microscope down the hall on the third floor. It was at least twice as nice as seeing him somewhere she expected him to be.

Just … isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?” “It sets a dangerous precedent.” “For avoiding pain?” “For avoiding life.

I know what it’s like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page

I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter. “I pictured you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you looked like. “And then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.