"The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break."

"This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars."

"I thought masturbating was embarassing. I didn't even know why. It just was. It was like having sex with yourself. Having sex with yourself was really weird. Autoeroticism."

"One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word."

"I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful."

"I wonder if he'd been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that."

"I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. 'I don't know', I said. 'Tomorrow."

"When I walked into the house, I went in search of one of my dad's bottles. Not that they were that hard to find. He hid bottles all over the house. I knew where they all were. That was one of my hobbies, finding where my dad hid his bottles. It was my version of looking for Easter eggs. In my house, Easter lasted forever."

"The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain."

"The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across the desert sky."

"We'd been so sure of ourselves, but now we were lost."

"One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same."

"What is it with you and that book?'Rafael laughed. 'We have a personal relationship."

"Dad? Dad, no. No. I can't. I can't. Why are you saying these things?'Because I can't stand watching all that loneliness that lives inside you."

"You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them."

"Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life."

"Some boys... Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful."

"People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word."

"All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was sad. It made me sad too. I didn't like sad."

"So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah I had all kinds of reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn't help. Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all."

"Rafael?Yeah?Do we all have monsters?Yes.Why does God give us so many monsters?You want to know my theory?Sure.I think it's other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn't have anything to do with it."

"I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn't matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn't do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That's the way he was."

"See, this is the way I see it. Not all anger is the same. Because there are different kids of anger. And you know what else - sometimes, anger is a virtue. As long as you're not making someone bleed."

"But the thing is, I didn't make my friends happy and they didn't make me happy. All we did was get stoned out of our minds. That didn't have anything to do with happiness."

"I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that?"

"The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea."

"I guess I didn't have it so bad.Maybe everybody didn't love me,but i wasn't one of those kids that everyone hated,either.I was good in a fight.So people left me alone.i was almost invisible.i think i liked it that way.And then Dante came along."

"Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something."

"How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?"

"I'd rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty."

"Life was like that- there would always be something scratching at the door. And whatever was scratching would just scratch and scratch until you opened the door."

"You're fighting this war in the worst way possible.' 'I don't know how to fight it, Dad.'You should ask for help,' he said.'I don't know how to do that, either."

"He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him."

"I think you love him more than you can bear."

"The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more."

"All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of theuniverse, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been soclose and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, Ihad fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right.And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars."

"See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much work. I mean, I say that word as if it clearly articulates what I'm really feeling. And it doesn't. It's a shortcut."

"I thought of what my mom had said. 'You talk like a man.' It was easier to talk like a man than to be one."

"Ad we interviewing each other?Something like that.What position am I applying for?Best friend.I thought I already had the job.Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch."

"Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely."

"I couldn't exactly storm away in anger. I'd just have to close my eyes and shut out the universe."

"I hadn't even solved the mystery of my own body."

"I wanted to buy a T-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWABLE."

"Healthy people have healthy boundaries. Unhealthy people, well, let's not get into that. It's like this: some people have walls which means they let no one in. This equals unhealthy. Some people let everyone in and let themselves be stepped all over. This equals unhealthy."

"What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat's so great about a life that's sober?There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.All I wanna do is drink and die. Nothing is real. It's all a big lie. All I wanna do is drink and die. There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun."

"I'm not a good kid. Yeah, look, I'm just a piece of paper with the word sad and a bunch of cuss words written on it.A lousy piece of paper. That's me.A piece of paper that's waiting to be torn up."

"For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad."

"When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending."

"The problem with parents is that they're adults."

"I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole."