"He thought about this for a second. "True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don't have anyone to be your 2 a.m. Which would kind of suck. I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. "Your what?" "Two a.m." He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's, like, the highest level of friendship."

"Someone who normally moved so slowly, this time, for once, was long gone."

"The important thing to remember, ... is that you are a human being and worthy of respect."

"I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known."

"Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said 'friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier."

"Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one."

"He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either."

"Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?"

"What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless."

"So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more."

"Plus there's the fact, he went on, making it clear he didn't need me to reply anyway, "that music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it."

"That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say."

"Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to."

"You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs."

"I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are."

"It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count."

"You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it."

"Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky."

"Jennifer Anne had prepared some complicated-looking recipe involving chicken breasts stuffed with sweet potatoes topped with a vegetable glaze. They looked perfect, but it was the kind of dish where you just knew someone had to have been pawing at your food for a long while to get it just right, their fingers all in what now you were having to stick in your mouth."

"The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything."

"You know the minute you stop thinking about it, it'll happen."

"Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening."

"Isn't it weird the way you remember things, when someone's gone?"

"If someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don't change because of it. It's just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it."

"You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place."

"But you don't have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt."You don't have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn't always out to get you."

"It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder -if not impossible- to lose."

"Relationships dont always make sense, especially from the outside."

"It's hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean."

"It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin."

"Nah," I said. "But if it does, just tell him I said to get back on the bike.""What?""He'll understand."

"I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him."

"Life is full of screwups," he said, chucking another paper at the split-level before taking the corner. "You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence."

"Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there."

"He had a nice smile. Seeing it, I felt like I'd won a prize, because he was so sparing with them."

"It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim."

"You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are."

"Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it."

"There's a kind of radar that you get, after years of being talked about and made fun of by other people. You can almost smell it when it's about to happen, can recognize instantly the sound of a hushed voice, lowered just enough to make whatever is said okay. I had only been in Colby for a few weeks. But I had not forgotten."

"All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind."

"But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential."

"Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?"

"But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids.I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again,pulling me upward into light,to drown."

"But I didn't. I didn't say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys- other than a competitors for grades or class rank- was nonexistent."

"You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core."

"Don't be a fool. Don't give up something important to hold onto someone who can't even say they love you."

"I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential."

"It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think."

"I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good."

"The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true."