When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimised, however questionable they may be. Our opponents, or simply our neighbours, stop sharing common ground with us and become our enemies. We stop being aggressors and become defenders. The envy, greed or resentment that motivates us becomes sanctified, because we tell ourselves we're acting in self-defence.

Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?

When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known.

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.

No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice.

Some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle

Bike, eat, drink, talk. Ride the subway, read, read maps. Make maps, make art. Finish the Gates application. Tell my dad not to stress about it. Hug my mom. Kiss my little sister. Kiss my dad. Make out with Noelle. Make out with her more. Take her on a picnic. See a movie with her. See a movie with Aaron. Heck, see a movie with Nia. Have a party. Tell people my story. Volunteer at 3 North. Help people like Bobby. Like Muqtada. Like me. Draw more. Draw a person. Draw a naked person. Draw Noelle naked. Run, travel, swim, skip. Yeah, I know it’s lame, but, whatever. Skip anyway. Breathe... Live.

I am suddenly aware of the separation between my-actual-self and myself-as-seen-by-others.

She's too good for me, she's too good for anyone! All I could do was let her know. I said: 'I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.'

I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.