It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.I knew that a part of him would never be the same.They cracked more than his ribs.

You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.

Everyone was always becoming someone else.Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can aguy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?

I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

To look up and not down To look forward and not back To look out and not in and To lend a hand.

When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working.

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded upon a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts and we grow happier as we grow older.

Marriage equality - I think that it's a constitutionally guaranteed right. Let's end the drug wars. Let's balance the federal budget, and that means reforming the entitlements - Medicaid, Medicare.

Why don't we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it.

I'm a big fan of domino masks, like Zorro, or Robin. You could put a domino mask on anything, and it becomes a superhero. You put a domino mask on a milkman, and he becomes, like, Super Milkman.

I am a very good shot. I have hunted for every kind of animal. But I would never kill an animal during mating season.

I have a dream, one dream, keep dreaming. Dream of freedom, justice dreaming, dreaming of equality and hopefully no longer required to dream them

The record producer is the music world's equivalent of a film director.