"Doubt is an acceptable risk for happiness."

"I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative."

"It's as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are."

"What strange creatures we are, to find silence peaceful, when permanent silence is the thing we most dread."

"Love doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third day.It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirt.It just has to be."

"Well, I agree that 'trial and error' is a pretty pessimistic name for it. And maybe that's what it is most of the time. But I think the point is that it's not just try-error. Most of the time, it's try-error-try."

"Life goes on. Get over it. You're still young. It'll get better. Blah, Blah, Blah."

"Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and I am just giving myself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover? Shriek and curse? No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it because if you can make yourself happy in the rain, then you're doing pretty alright in life."

"We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time."

"We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough."

"My life changes all the time, but books don't change. My reading of them changes-- I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you've been before, and it welcomes you back."

"I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there."

"After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why."

"As we become the distant past, you become a future few of us would have imagined."

"It might feel like the end of the world--but it's the beginning of your art."

"I didn't let her go. She went. It's not my fault.She did it.She could undo it. This is feeling so fucking famliar.Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Of is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?"

"He was thirteen then, Elijah almost seven. Now, ten years later, Elijah realizes he's older than Danny was. That all of those changes have happened to him, too. The changes that nobody has any say over. The biology-"growing and "up as a physical matter. The changes after-Elijah has to believe they're a matter of choice. Looking at Danny used to be like looking at the future. Now looking at Danny is like looking at a future he doesn't want."

"Love me less,but love me for a long time."

"LYNDA (TO TINY):Look forward to the momentwhen it falls apart.Look forward to themomentwhen you mustrearrange yourheart.It might feel like theend of the world-but it's the beginning of yourart."

"Let's always love each other, and never be in love with each other."

"This is what you do now to give your day topography--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It's a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn't really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality."

"It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer."

"To feel such a longing for his own life, even as he's living it-he wonders what that means."

"They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep."

"Even though you're not my type, gender wise, you're certainly my type, person-wise."

"There was a time before youbut I can't remember it nowa time before your beauty and Iwere formally introducedI'm sure I lived without youbut I don't remember howcan't imagine living withoutthese feelings you've produced."

"The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged - and only when you challenge yourself - do you discover what truly matters."

"O Lord, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt, at least let mewear a Walkman..."

"He is both the source of my happiness and the one i want to share it with."

"Isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone's laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does. loll. loll. i can't think any more. loll. loll!"

"I'm persnickety," I confessed. "Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend." "Do you want to know why I never married?" "The question wasn't at the top of my list," I admitted. The old woman made me meet her eye. "Listen to me; I never married because I was easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It is much better to be too easily interested."

"I've always wanted the happy ending, but now I'll just settle for the ending."

"I hate that would. Straight. At the very least, those of us who are nonstraight should get to be called curvy. Or scenic. Actually, I like that: 'Do you think she's straight?' 'Oh no. She's scenic."

"It's up to you, not fate."

"There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with."

"What are your interests?""Your son in my room," I said."Excuse me?""The sun and the moon," I said. "Astronomy."

"Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored. People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls. There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens."

"He plants himself right there in front of Craig's mother and says, "You need to love him. I don't care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.And Craig's mother whispers back, "I know. I know."

"The sound of the words as they're said is always different from the sound they make when they're heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside."

"Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends-an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels-and it is that-comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there."

"This is what a small victory feels like. It feels like a little surprise and a lot of relief. It makes the past feel lighter and the future seem even lighter than that, if only for a moment. It feels like rightness winning. It feels like possibility."

"It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right."

"Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one."

"As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter. You up? he asks.And the reply comes instantly:For anything."

"In an age of guidebooks, websites, and radio waves, discovery has nearly become a lost feeling. If anything, it is now a matter of expectations to surpass-rarely a matter of unexpected wonderment. It is unusual to find a situation that appears without word, or a place that was not known to be on the road."

"I read it a lot, whenever I find it in a library. Partly because I find new things every time I read it, but also because these BOOKS are always there for me. All of them are there for me. My life changes all the time, but books don't change. My reading of them changes-I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you've been before, and it welcomes you back."

"Avery doesn't know what these people are talking about, and since he's driving, he can't go online to check. The sensation he has is a strange, difficult one. He knows these people aren't talking about him. But at the same time they are talking about him, in their blanket dismissal. And they're also talking about us. Because so many of them are our age or older, stuck in previous decades of thought. The gays of today, the gays of yesterday-we're all the same bother, all the same wrong. Not people, really. Just something to yell about."

"I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live."

"Rolf! what? are you really rolling on the floor laughing? well, please stay down there for a sec while I KICK YOUR ASS."

"The good old days needed a lot of improvement. People aren't the only things that get better with age."