He has a vision of his life as a sliver of soap, worn and used and smoothed into a slender, blunt-edged arrow-head, a little more of it disintegrating with every day.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.

. . . breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart.

There was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

It's a good story, ' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.''Please, ' I said.And then he did.

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

God hasn't called us to be successful, just faithful.

Rigor alone is paralytic death, but imagination alone is insanity.

When everything has to be right something isn't.

If I find what I like, maybe in about five years well be able to afford to build a home in the country.

I believe anything can happen.

Most books and movies that are handed to teenagers are filled with stereotypes.

The imporant things in life never happened by accident. But even with those things that were meant to be, sometimes you had to wait awhile and then maybe give them a little nudge.

It is not in our choice to spread the gospel or not. It is our death if we do not.

Im not interested in fad songs.

They chatter together like birds on Cypress Hill, but all they say is 'Live, live, live, live, live!' It's all they've learned, it's the only advice they can give.