"I wasn't in danger today," I tell him in a choked voice. "I escaped danger today." And I did... I feel like the whole day has been an electrical shock, paddles straight to my heart, bringing me out of a lifelong torpor I hadn't even known I was in. "I escaped," I repeat."

"Don't be scared...Women can handle the worst kind of pain. You'll find out one day."

"Accidents. It's all about the accidents."

"The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness."

"There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that."

"It was like finding out the world was made of gossamer and could be so easily ripped apart. To be solely at the mercy of fate."

“It takes a certain kind of naiveté, or perhaps just stupidity, to know how things will end and still hope otherwise.”

"Mom was adamantly pro-choice. She had a bumper sticker on the car that read If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child? But in her case the choice was to keep me."

"It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen."

"And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's suppose to be. This is not how my life is suppose to turn out."

"If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay."

"Willem laughs again. The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness."

"It's just accidental, just temporary. Until the next accident sends me somewhere new. That's how life works."

"The day is ending, it's not coming back."

"Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I've heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that's what it's like, I wouldn't mind. If that's what dying is like, I wouldn't mind that at all."

"The talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life."

"But Dad looked delighted. "My Mia's singing 'Waiting for Vengeance' to my Teddy. What do you think about that?"

"I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we'd have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we'd climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again. We're swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it's just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we'll climb out, grab hands, and jumo again."

"To be or not to be: that is the question. That's from Hamlet's - maybe Shakespeare's - most famous soliloquy. I had to memorize the whole speech for sophomore English, and I can still remember every word. I didn't give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words right and collect my A."

"He starts telling them about our day, embellishing it so that it almost sounds fun. It's how all good travel stories are born. Nightmares spun into punch lines."

"He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people's capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I'm floored every time."

"Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take."

"In order that people who suffer from depression seek treatment without a second thought, the stigmas must further fall until we reach a point in time when that person with leukemia and that person with depression both receive the same level of sympathy and the same level of rigorous treatment. Both people deserve it."

"When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you'll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium."

"My anger feels hot and bilious but I keep it bottled until it doubles back and I'm mad at myself."

"Dying is easy. Living is hard."

"Is this how it is with lies? The first one comes hard, the second one easier, until they slip off your tongue easier than truths - maybe because they are easier than truths."

"After graduation, I wanted to work for 'Sassy', which I loved, but it had folded. So I wound up at 'Seventeen' for three years on staff and two as a contributor, and I wrote these great stories that nobody ever believes 'Seventeen' does. Serious stories for teens about social justice issues - gun control, migrant farm workers."

"For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you."

"Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that's what it's like, I wouldn't mind."

"My chips are all cashed out. There's nothing to lose. Or maybe I've already lost it and found it, and whatever else there might be to lose..."

"Almost don't matter. You got to deal with the situation at hand."

"Sometimes you make choices in life, and sometimes choices make you."

"I didn't give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words straight and collect my A."

"And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found."

"It's my turn to see you through,' she whispers, coming back to me and wrapping me in her blanket as I lose my shit all over again. She holds me until I recover my Y chromosome."

"I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are."

"My parents always seemed less like lovebirds than like amiable business partners, for whom I'm the sole product."

"I'm surrounded by people and feel alone."

"He looks at me and then, reverting to the voice he'd used with Kendra, says, 'If homegirls wanna see me as ghetto trash'--he stops and switches to his lispy, sassy voice--'or big-ass queer'--now he switches to his deepest Shakespeare voice--'I shall not take it upon myself to disabuse them."

"Adam's lips are set in a grime line. I can't tell if he's about to cry or about to punch the guard. For his sake, I hope it's the former. For you own, I hope the latter."

"To be, or not to be: that is the question. That's from Hamlet's - maybe Shakespeare's - most famous soliloquy. But what if Shakespeare - and Hamlet - were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?"

"But that's the thing with death. The whisper of it descent travels fast and wide, and people must've know I'd become a corpse because nobody even came to view the body."

"I'm not sure if the question's rhetorical or if she thinks I have a clue to her metaphysical mystery. And I'm in no state to answer either way because I'm crying. I don't realize it till I taste the sale against my lips. I can't remember the last time I've cried but, once I accept the mortification of sniveling like a baby, the floodgates open and I'm sobbing now, in front of Mia. In front of the whole damn world."

"One in a million cases; such comforting odds, except when you were the one."

"It's okay if you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. But that's what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you have to leave us. It's okay if you want to stop fighting."

"Remember, the opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity."

"Even though I think that Mia and I have enough secrets between the two of us at this point."

"But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love."

"Allyson meanwhile is remembering. Why this person? All the things she has told herself, or other people have told her - infatuation or Paris or good acting or lust - no longer hold water, because she remembers so viscerally and feels it anew. It's not any of that. It's not even him. Or all him. It's her. The way she can be with him."