“You are no longer responsible. You are no longer allowed to give a shit. Nobody can need you ever again. Go.”

“You're absolved," I tell him.He brings his eyes back up to mine. There's no fucking way he knows what that word means. That's a word I dream someone will say to me.So I put it in his language. "You...”

“I ignore people who need me and latch on to people who don't. I dive into every other world except my own just because I want something more glamorous than my real life. I do destructive shit so a ...”

“He says, "But it is really whatever, you know? You've saved me way more times. And we call ourselves friends."It doesn't matter what we call ourselves, really. "You already saved me," I say."That w...”

“If this were a fairy tale, this would be the part where the fishboy appears and Diana shoots him through the heart. Because he is a tragic hero, he's our fucking Gatsby, and he lived for his fish a...”

“I'm oxygen and he's dying to breathe.”

“Do not fall in love with people like me. I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like b...”

“It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be love...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches...”

“Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud...”

“The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripp...”