"The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well."
"I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen."
"You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes."
"It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed."
"I'd rather die my way than live yours."
"One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in the wilderness. And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That's when you realize that most of it - life, the relentless mechanism of existing - isn't about you. It doesn't include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you've jumped the edge. Even after you're dead."
"I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older."
"I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside you like a stone."
"Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do - the only thing - is run."
"Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will disappoint you. When left to their own devices, people lie and keep secrets and change and disappear some behind a different face or personality, some behind early morning fog, beyond a cliff. That's why the cure is so important. That's why we need it."
"The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t."
"I guess that’s what saying Good-bye is always like—jumping off the edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you’re in the air there is nothing you can do but let go."