“When you've been lost as I have," he once said, "you get good at finding your way home.”

“When you've been lost as I have," he once said, "you get good at finding your way home.”

“It’s almost funny, in a tragic way, that the fiery thing at the center of my universe did die and that I, a girl whose name is synonymous with summer, am expected to live without it.”

“My inheritance is grief and sunlight and the ability to choose which to hold on to.”

“We both know that pain comes for us all. It's almost a relief. Because if all of us are going to someday lose the people we love most, or be lost by them, then what is there to do but live?”

“Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?' I suggest....'No, I mean, maybe there's a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.”

“And when you see those good things—and I promise you, there are so many good things—they’re going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss always seems deeper and bigger when you stare at it. If you stick it out, it’s all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they’ll all feel worth it when you’re staring light in the face.”

“We may be different, but in this moment we're feeling the exact same thing: the sad kind of bliss where you realize, suddenly, how perfect your life really has been all along. So perfect it hurts, and you could let yourself weep if you wanted. So perfect that even though everything you know is ending, you truly believe life will continue to be beautiful, even—or maybe especially—in those pure moments of loss.”

“For a moment we're both silent, staring. I wonder if either of us really sees the other clearly anymore or if we stuck looking at the frozen images of who we used to be.”

“Beau, what is it you want?""A porch," he says softly. He says it like it's my name, and right then, I think, what both of us want more than anything is something we can never have. "All I really want is to build a house with a nice, big porch that gets used every day.”