“My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards—we’re so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap.”

“However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn't escape death: It would get us all in the end.”

“I can't stand men crying. It's wrong, isn't it? Their faces aren't made for it, they kind of crumple; it's painful to watch.”

“I don't understand, Jem. I don't understand why you'd leave me. Why would you that?”

“Life's not that simple. Not so easy to move on when the anger you've got is what keeps you going.”

“And then, a strangely comforting thought trickled through me—I had nothing, so I could do anything now. Anything I wanted. I had nothing left to lose.”

“It's okay to talk about it. Death is so normal, I don't know why everyone gets so hung up about it. We all have to deal with it. Most people that you talk to have lost someone, but nobody talks about it.”

“My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards—we’re so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap.”

“He loved me and I loved him, but the number in my head was telling me that he was going to die today. And the numbers had never been wrong.”

“How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware you're alive, unaware that one day you will die.”

“We all know we're one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. We just kid ourselves that it's not happening.”