From the Bookshelf of Quirky Reads | Book Club…

“I think I’ve got a map in my car that wants to be used, and I think there are places we can go that need to be seen. Maybe no one else will ever visit them and appreciate them or take the time to think they’re important, but maybe even the smallest places mean something. And if not, maybe they can mean something to us. At the very least, by the time we leave, we know we will have seen it, this great state of ours. So come on. Let’s go. Let’s count for something. Let’s get off that ledge”

You make me happy,

Whenever you’re around I’m safe inside your smile,

You make me handsome,

Whenever I feel my nose just seems a bit too round,

You make me special, and God knows I’ve longed to be that kind of guy to have around,

You make me love you,

And that could be the greatest thing my heart was ever fit to do ….

You make me lovely, and it’s so lovely to be lovely to the one I love ….

“Being sucked into a black hole would pretty much be the coolest way to die. It’s not like anyone has firsthand experience, and scientists can’t decide if you would spend weeks floating past the event horizon before being torn apart or soar into a kind of maelstrom of particles and be burned alive. I like to think of what it would be like if we were swallowed, just like that. Suddenly none of this would matter. No more worrying about where we’re going or what’s to become of us or if we’ll ever disappoint another person again. All of it—just … gone.”

“Listen, I’m the freak. I’m the weirdo. I’m the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don’t make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I’m not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I’m a person.”

“If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever ... I feel myself shining in the dark … I am arrayed. I am prepared. This is the momentary pause; the dark moment. The fiddlers have lifted their bows ... This is my calling. This is my world. All is decided and ready … I am rooted, but I flow … ‘Come,’ I say, ‘come.’ ”

I write the only thing I can think of: “Stay,” I say, “stay.”

“What goes through your mind when you’re thinking about it?”

“About …”

“Killing yourself. I want to know what that feels like, what a person thinks about. I want to know why.”

“I can only tell you how I felt. Ugly. Disgusting. Stupid. Small. Worthless. Forgotten. It just feels like there’s no choice. Like it’s the most logical thing to do because what else is there? You think, ‘No will even miss me. They won’t know I’m gone. The world will go on, and it won’t matter that I’m not here. Maybe it’s better if I was never here.’ ”

“But you don’t feel that way all the time. I mean, you’re Amanda Monk. You’re popular. Your parents are nice to you. Your brothers are nice to you.”

“In those moments, none of it matters. It’s like that stuff is happening to someone else because all you feel is dark inside, and that darkness just kind of takes over. You don’t even really think about what might happen to the people you leave behind, because all you can think about is yourself.”

“Don’t get me wrong—I’d rather be here than dead—but sometimes I feel that everything that, like, makes me up has gone away.”

“...I don’t need to worry that Finch and I never filmed our wanderings. It’s okay that we didn’t collect souvenirs or that we never had time to pull it all together in a way that made sense to anyone else but us.

The thing I realize is that it’s not what you take, it’s what you leave”

“...And like it or not, I loved Theodore Finch. He was good for me, even though you think he wasn’t and you hate his parents and you probably hate him, and even though he went away and I wish he hadn’t, and I can never bring him back, and it might have been my fault. So it’s good and it’s bad and it hurts, but I like thinking about him. If I think about him, he won’t be completely gone either. Just because they’re dead, they don’t have to be. And neither do we.”