“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.”

The past feels distant, even when it’s near. The future feels assured, even when it isn’t.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me.

Maybe there is something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.

It is so hard to leave, until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

When you acknowledge that there is nothing repulsive or unforgivable or shameful about yourself, it becomes easier to be that authentic person and feel like you’re living a less performed life.

I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.

I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.

Your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but the gift itself.

I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence

You can love someone so much but you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.

You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with.

It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I had an awful first quarter but I picked it up. To all you single guys out there, it’s not how you start the date, it’s how you finish it sir.

I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of.

It’s a merger of home life and work life. They aren’t that separate, I must confess, and my daughters know an awful lot about childcare reform now because of it.

The secret of spiritual success is a hunger that persists…It is an awful condition to be satisfied with one’s spiritual attainments…

It is an awful thing for me to see people who profess to be Christians lifeless, powerless, and in a place where their lives are so parallel to unbelievers’ lives that it is difficult to tell which place they are in, whether in the flesh or in the Spirit.