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I can’t shake the persistent, needling feeling that I’ve forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever.
Of all the systems of the body—neurological, cognitive, special, sensory—the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed.
Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.
Mary Magdalene, who was nearly killed from love: “So infected with deliria and in violation of the pacts of society, she fell in love with men who would not have her or could not keep her.”
She was tormented by her past, haunted by the loves lost and damaged and ruined, by the evils she had inflicted on others and that others had inflicted on her.
She didn’t even believe in the cure. That was her whole problem.
It’s like all their anxiety and self-consciousness has been removed along with the disease.
Everyone wants to prevent an epidemic.
H is for hydrogen, a weight of one; When fission’s split, as brightly lit As hot as any sun. He is for helium, a weight of two; The noble gas, the ghostly pass That lifts the world anew. Li is for lithium, a weight of three; A funeral pyre, when touched with fire— And deadly sleep for me. Be is for beryllium, a weight of four
Sometimes I feel like she deserves a best friend who is just a little more special.
Once Hana told me that she likes me because I’m for real—because I really feel things. But that’s the whole problem: how much I feel things.
you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you’ve ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry. . . .”
Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will eventually 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 a dense early morning fog, beyond a cliff.
This music ebbs and flows, irregular, sad. It reminds me, weirdly, of watching the ocean during a bad storm, the lashing, crashing waves and the spray of sea foam against the docks; the way it takes your breath away, the power and the hugeness of it.
Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small.
Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you—sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.
Vampires and werewolves and Invalids: things that will rip into you, tear you to shreds. Deadly things.
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 of you like a stone.
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.
My arms are aching, and whenever I close my eyes I see bar codes.
It suddenly seems incredible to me that this was my best friend, that we could hang out for days and never run out of things to talk about, that I would come home from her house with my throat sore from laughing.
You came from different starts and you’ll come to different ends:
Hana’s always had a thing against children. She’s always saying they’re too sticky and clingy, like Jolly Ranchers that have been left too long in a hot pocket.
Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic, and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled that they can be responsible, dependable, and content.
“I like you.” “You don’t know me,” I say quickly. “I want to, though.”
Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.
Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.
“Don’t treat me like a child,” I say. “Then stop acting like one,” he fires back.
Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t. But that isn’t it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you, God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.
