All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

"...the great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody." Finch

"...maybe you never dreamed of seeing Indiana, but, ...here's what I think: I think I've got a map in my car that wants to be used, and I think there are places we can go that need to be seen. Maybe no one else will ever visit them and appreciate them or take the time to think they're important, but maybe even the smallest places mean something. And if not, maybe they can mean something to us. At teh very least, by the time we leave, we know we will have seen it, this great state of ours. So come on. Let's go. Let's count for something. Let's get off that ledge."

"Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here." -V Woolf, The Waves

She was smart, stubborn, moody, funny, mean when she lost her temper, sweet, protective of the people she loved. her favorite color was yellow. ...I could tell her anything, because the thing about Eleanor was that she didn't judge. She was my best friend." I've never had one. what's it like? "I guess you can be yourself, whatever that means--the best and the worst of you. And they love you anyway. you can fight, but even when you're mad at them, you know they're not going to stop being your friend."

Sorry wastes time. you have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.

Finch's Great Manifesto: It means 'the urge to be, to count for something, and if death must come, to die valiantly, with acclamation--in short, to remain a memory.'"

I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping.

It's not a lie if it's how you feel. Sometimes things feel true to us even if they're not.

Julijonas Urbonas, the man who thought up the Euthanasia Coaster, claims it's engineered to "humanely--with elegance and euphoria--take the life of a human being." ...those 10Gs create enough centrifugal force on the body so that blood rushes down instead of up to the brain, which results in something called cerebral hypoxia, and this is what kills you. ...think about the phrase "elegance and euphoria," and how it describes exactly what I feel with Violet. For once, I don't want to be anyone but Theodore Finch, the boy she sees.

in his poem "Epilogue," Robert Lowell asked, "Yet why not say what happened?" I'm not sure. Maybe no one can say. All I know is what i wonder: which of my feelings are real? which of the mes is me? There is only one me I've ever really liked, and he was good and awake as long as he could be.