"To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility."

"It'll make you look rugged,' Mel says.'Because I woke up this morning,' I say, 'and the one thing I realized I lacked was ruggedness."

"He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder."

"And then his noise falls completely silent-And he stops struggling-And looking right into my eyes-He dies.My Todd dies."

"There is a brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"

"I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"

"We're each other's questions, aren't we? The question that never gets an answer."

"It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again."

"It's love. But it's a different kind,""Doesn't make it any less love, though."

"It felt like waiting for something to happen. Which has to be the worth part of being young. So many of your decisions aren't yours, they're made by other people. Sometimes they're made badly by other people. Sometimes they're made by other people who have no idea what the consequences of those decisions might be. The bastards."

"Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"

"Not everyone has to be the chosen one. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great from them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people probably. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyways."

"I don't believe in guardian angels," Regine says seriously. "Just people who are there for you and people who aren't."

"Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?"

"Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you've got to do is find a way to live there."

"Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts."

"But this, all this, isn't the story I'm trying to tell. This is all past. This is the part of your life where it gets taken over by other people's stories and there's nothing you can do about it except hold on tight and hope you're still alive at the end to take up your own story again. So that's what we did. Me, Mel, and Meredith all moved on, and we're the stories we're living now.Aren't we?"

"No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky's too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?''And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there's so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don't get any work done because we're all looking at it too much?"

"The boy who refused to lose his soul."

"Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day."

"And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say."

"Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them."

"She is born in the breath of a cloud."

"There's a bunch od huge churchs clustered together, trying to blend in with all the family-themed restaurants, because salvation is as easy as chicken wings, I guess."

"HELP!I race to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out-..It's empty.Viola's breathing heavy in my arms .And Haven is empty.I reach the middle of the square.I don't see nor hear a soul.I spin around again."HELP! I cry.But there's no one.Haven's completely empty.There ain't hope here after all."

"What a sad thing men are. Can't do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can't build something up without tearing it down."

"In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed."

"As incredible as it seemed, time kept moving forward for the rest of the world.The rest of the world that wasn't waiting."

"If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that."

"Like how stars might sound. Or moons But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It's a sound like one planet singing to another, high stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that's sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word. One word."

"Blame is something that is shared and denied in equal measures."

"We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love."

"Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle."

"I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to live long enough so I can really live."

"People see stories everywhere," Regine says. "That's what my father used to say. We take random events and we string them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true." She glances back at Seth. "We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy."

"Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you."

"It's like he's my family, except better, because I've chosen him."

"We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy."

"Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains."

"Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished."

"If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean."

"You won't," says the Mayor, smiling again. "Everyone knows you aren't a killer, Todd."He pushes Viola forward again -She calls out from the pain of it -Viola, I think - -I grit my teeth and raise the rifle -I cock it -And I say what's true -"I would kill to save her," I say."

"But I don't care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don't think they're real or important or you think that we'll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that's not really my business. I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you."

"A good idea always attracts other good ideas."

"He is worse than the others, I show. He is worst of all of them.Because"Because he knew he was doing wrong. He felt the pain of his actions"But he did not amend them, shows the Sky.The rest are worth as much as their pack animals, I show, but worst is the one who knows better and does nothing."

"And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me."

"A peace that blacked yer eye,' I say. 'A peace that split yer lip.' He looks at me for another second and then gives a sad snort. "The words of a sage, he says, "in the voice of a hick."

"So we forgive each other?" The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?"And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say."Always," I say to him. "Every time."

"Libraries are not facing crisis, they are in crisis."

"Know yourself and go in swinging, if it hurts when you hit, it might be real, too."