It was time to let go of the mad desire to remember. It was time to start living whatever life would come. In the present, not the past.

What's so great about writing?" "You can make anything true

Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn’t given the chance to live because I don’t have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to speak it to. Especially if it’s a particularly good sentence, a sentence with truth or beauty or humor or sadness to it. The best ones always take you by surprise. They sneak into your head while you’re walking down the aisles at a supermarket, or flat-out assault you when you’re at your grandmother’s funeral, and you have to scramble to give the thought life before it’s gone forever. Cocktail napkins, palms, text messages sent to yourself.

Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living.

No sky Leila had seen before could compare to the beauty she was seeing above her. It didn't feel like some accident of nature but rather something that was purposefully unleashed on the world.

Funny, how it took a little bit of pain to remember that certain parts of yourself were alive.

How do text messages make you feel existential?I start thinking about exactly that: how people can edit a thought before sending it out to the world. They can make themselves seem more well spoken than they are, or funnier, smarter. I start thinking that no one in the world is who they say the are, then my mind goes to how I also edit myself, not just online but in real life, except for those rare instances like right now where I'm ranting- even though that's a lie because I've had this train of thought before and damned if I didn't tweak it in my head a few times to make it sound better- and then my mind starts racing so furiously I can't control my thoughts, and I start thinking about robots and wondering if I'm even a real person.

As long as we don't get turned into something that looks more like high school, more like everybody else and less like us, I'll be okay.

People go entire lives without figuring out exactly what they want from life. You already have it, and the future you and your dad have planned out for you in going to take it away from you.

What if she was supposed to be a painter, but no one ever gave her a brush?

All the recognizable cliques came by, and so did those un-groupable stragglers who were known by their little circles of two or three.

The thing with thoughts is that they die, like everything else. But almost everything else leaves a trace behind, even if it's a tiny carcass, some proof that it existed. Unless thoughts are spoken or written or sung or acted upon, there's no evidence that they were ever there.

A native tongue, in my opinion, isn't the language spoken where you were born or the first language you learned; it's a language that makes you feel at home. It's a language that you don't command, but that commands you. And without it, you'd feel lost, unsure of how to express to the world everything you care enough to express.

I keep expecting to bump into you two on the road, but maybe the universe isn’t yet ready to handle you and me side by side again.

I'm usually a bit awkward in houses that I haven't been to before, so it's a way to not look weird. If I find something I've read before it automatically makes me more comfortable.

Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more or less than we are anything. We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely.

I'm a pretty forgetful guy, but everything she says, I remember. I remember what colour her hair ribbon was when we met on the first day of fifth grade. I remember that she loves orchids because they look delicate but aren't, really. From a single postcard she sent me when traveling with her family two summers ago. I remember what my name looks like in her handwriting.

I hate technology. It provides so many different channels of loneliness. Every time you check your email and don’t see a new message, you know that, even though people have the ability to contact you at any time of the day from anywhere on the planet, no one is interested in doing so. Phones are constant reminders that 160 people you know fairly well have nothing to say to you most of the time.

She wanted to reach up to the night and dig her fingers into it, beg it to stay just a little bit longer.

No point in living a life less ordinary if you don't know what the other side looks like.

The sun kept dipping down into the ocean and the lights came on at the harbor, casting sudden shadows on the ground, illuminating the faces that were just a second ago silhouettes. The sky was golden and purple, the ocean a darker shade of violet.

To be sorry you hurt me is not enough for me to forgive you.