...there are books...which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.
If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be mt flowers.
All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.
It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.
I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.
Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.
Nothing,” I said. “I’m just…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t know how to. “I’m just very, very fond of you.
Hi, I’m at the Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an ambulance. The great love of my life has a malfunctioning G-tube.
Augustus Waters was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom.
The problem, of course, is that there's no way of knowing that your last good day is your Last Good Day. At the time, it's just another good day.
what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us- not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us as individuals.
The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic
And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.
My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.
No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.
... and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.
Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.
The champagne had been donated by one of Gus's doctors - Gus being the kind of person who inspires doctors to give their best bottles of champagne to children.
I said 'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't speak Swedish.' 'Well, of course you don't. Neither do I. Who the hell speaks Swedish?
You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.
The stars here and the ones there are each special for their own reason. You grew up looking at these, while I looked at mine. Now we’ve both looked at each of them together.
