“This pain is not to make you sad, remember. Thats where people go on missing. This pain is just to make you more alert–because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them.”

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real–but you create the context. And the context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

“…because people who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they’d never admit in normal conversation. It’s a way for people to be honest without telling the truth.”

“We…need to forgive ourselves…For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.”

“Maybe that’s worse, not letting ourselves be loved. Because we’re too afraid of giving ourselves to someone we might lose.”

“It’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful.”

“What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end…”

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

“I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend… I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend…”

“You should know, if you never open up you’re never going to heal.”

“I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.”

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”