Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.

If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated with respect.' 'Ad,' Wallace said, 'it's a coffee table, not an orphan.

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.