Abundance Of Katherines Quotes

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.

Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou

That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.

There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

What matters to you defines your mattering.

Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.

How do you just stop being terrified of getting left behind and ending up by yourself forever and not meaning anything to the world?

That smile could end wars and cure cancer.

you can never love someone as much as you miss them.

I don't think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost.

The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real.

It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.

Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.

What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.

They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter.

Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, and noticed that someone had carved that GOD HATES FAG, which, aside from being a grammatical nightmare, is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm changing it to 'God Hates Baguettes.' It's tough to disagree with that. Everybody hates baguettes.

Dude, you're such a geek. And that's coming from an overweight Star Trek fan who scored a 5 on the AP Calculus test. So you know your condition is grave

I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

You know what I hate? The outdoors. I mean, generally. I don't like outside. I'm an inside person. I'm all about refrigeration and indoor plumbing and Judge Judy.

I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater. But he wasn't crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she'd taken the part of him that cried.

I'm what I need to be at any moment to stay above the ground but below the radar. The only sentence that begins with 'I' that's true of me is 'I'm full of shit.

I thought you hung the moon.

And so we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

Abligurition: an actual, if very obscure, English word, which means the spending of too much money on food.

The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn't over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.

Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.

We fatties have a bond, dude. It's like a secret society. We got all kinds of shit you don't know about. Handshakes, special fat people dances-we got these secret fugging lairs in the center of the earth and we go down there in the middle of the night when all the skinny kids are sleeping and eat cake and friend chicken and shit. Why d'you think Hollis is still sleeping, kafir? Because we were up all night in the secret lair injecting butter frosting into our veins. ...A fatty trusts another fatty.

I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.

I don't think God gives a shit if we have a dog or if a woman wears shorts. I think He gives a shit whether you're a good person.

You matter as much as the things that matter to you. And I got so backwards trying to matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.

I figured something out," he said aloud. "The future is unpredictable." Hassan said, "Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.

Colin's skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.

All hurt is brain hurt.

He wanted to draw out the moment before the moment- because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.

There's not even real *popularity* at my school." "That," Coli said emphatically, "is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.

Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus...

Colin did not laugh. Instead he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries - God, the nature of the universe, etc. - he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never seen on in the wild, and didn't really care to.

People are supposed to care. It's good that people mean something to you, that you miss people when they're gone.

Something about telling that story made my gut grow back together." What?" Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud." That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of." The people who've been in your secret hiding places." The people you bite your thumb in front of." Hi." Hi." ..." ..." Wow. My first Lindsey." My second Colin." That was fun. Let's try it again." Sold." ..." ..." ..." ...

You're not boring. You've got to stop saying that, or people will start believing you.

The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. And the second moral of the story, if a story can have multiple morals, is that Dumpers are not inherently worse than Dumpees - breaking up isn't something that gets done to you; it's something that happens with you.

What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think life asks more of you than watching TV.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that there’s some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.

Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.

That's absolutely true, about the eight glasses a day. There's no reason whatsoever to drink eight glasses of water a day unless you, for whatever reason, particularly like the taste of water. Most experts agree that unless there's something horribly wrong with you, you should just drink water whenever you're - get this - thirsty.

Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?

There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.

Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinetisimal change ripples outward —ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter —maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

Shame about how we’re gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. It’s the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is “sodomy’’.

The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible.

I was thinking about this girl you love so much," she said, "And this place I love so much. And how that happens. How you can just fall into it.

I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter -- maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much-and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you.

Let's put it this way- if The Fault in Our Stars was a person I would marry them. Will Grayson, WIll Grayson would be my maid/man of honor. Alaska and Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines and Let it Snow would be my best friends. In short- you can't go wrong with John Green. Ever.

By the way, I've decided to start referring to myself exclusively as 'Daddy.' Everytime Daddy would otherwise say 'I' or 'Me,' Daddy is now going to say 'Daddy.

In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

Collin Singleton could no more stay cool than a blue whale could stay skinny or Bangladesh could stay rich

He found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long. And Colin thought: Because like say I tell someone about my feral hog hunt. Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward - ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than some.

The problem exactly is that she dumped me. That I'm alone. Oh my God, I'm alone again. And not only that, but I'm a total failure in case you haven't noticed. I'm washed up. I'm former. Formerly the boyfriend of Katherine XIX. Formerly a prodigy. Formerly full of potential. Currently full of shit.

Je pense que j'taime

I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you.

I don't think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost....I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

I'm not interested in dating a girl I'm not gonna marry

He missed his imagined future.

Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.

10-5 space 16-5-14-19-5 space 17-21-5 space 10-5 space 20-1-9-13-5.

Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down

The future will erase everything—there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion.

We're invisible. I've never been here with someone else. It's different being invisible with someone.

He loved the scratching of pencil against paper when he was focused: it meant something was happening.

The French verb aimer has two meanings. And that’s why he liked her, and loved her. She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.

You can't dingleberry that! That's a flagrant misuse of the dingleberry!

Dude, if Kentucky is going to remind you of Paris, we're in a hell of a pickle.

Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But everyone has a tendency.

Because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.

Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted do cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage. It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty.

And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.

He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened.

Half-drunk on well-creamed gas station coffee and the exhilarating loneliness of a freeway in nighttime...

He knew he couldn't tell stories, that he always included extraneous details & tangents that interested only him.

Daddy is trying really fugging hard to think of a not-terrifying reason why you'd wake Daddy up in the middle of the night to ask that fugging question. But no. No. Daddy does not have a match or a lighter.

Crying is you, plus tears

Eternity bids thee to forget.

Maybe life is not about accomplishing some bullshit markers.

She was nothing but good and I was nothing but bad, but then she died, and I didn't.

But monotony doesn't make for painlessness. In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Appollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided.

And even though he felt pitiful and ridiculous, he didn't want it to end, because he knew the absence of her would hurt more than any breakup ever could.

Breaking up isn't something that gets done to you; its something that happens with you.

It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created.

She never liked me much, but she sure loved me

I mean, if Hardee's is urban, I'm not sure I want to see rural.

That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering. [p214]

He reached up t0 grab one and came down with several, and they kept coming, washing over him, floating all around him. Never have tampon strings seemed so beautiful as they rolled up and down with the wind, landing on the ground and then twirling and floating up again, falling and rising and falling and rising.

When it comes to girls (and in Colin's case, it so often did), everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, god forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated 19 girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them- every single solitary one- had dumped him.

I couldn't hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it's hot and dead quiet again, and I love you still.

He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you?

Formerly a prodigy. Formerly full of potential. Currently full of shit.

It’s just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.

Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all.

Incidentally, did you know that the whole eight glasses a day thing is complete bullshit and has no scientific basis? So many things are like that. Everyone just assumes they're true, because people are basically lazy and incurious, which incidentally is one of those words that sounds like it wouldn't be a word but is.

You and me will read a book and find three interesting things that we remember. But Colin finds everything intriguing. He reads a book about presidents and he remembers more of it because everything he reads clicks in his head as fugging interesting.

He kept thinking about one word—forever—and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage. It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he’d ever gotten.

Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.

I'm full of shit. I'm never myself. I've got a Southern accent around the oldsters; I'm a nerd for graphs and deep thoughts around you; I'm Miss Bubbly Pretty Princess with Colin. I'm nothing. The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real.

Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering

The whole pleasure of being in a state of unknowing is that as long as you don’t know, all possible outcomes feel as if they are happening.

And then it was the kind of dark your eyes never adjust to.

Colin emphatically pushed the book cover shut when he finished reading. "Did you like it?" His dad asked. "Yup," Colin said. He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

We're going to get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it's a grizzly bear?

It's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love no matter what.

Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears.

So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

The beautiful thing about driving was that it stole just enough of his attention - car parked on the side, maybe a cop, slow to speed limit, time to pass this sixteen-wheeler, turn signal, check rearview, crane neck to check blind spot and yes, okay, left lane.

She said 'I love you' as if it were a secret, and an immense one.

The problem with chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to the point where nothing is real.

But you know what they say about Gutshot: the population never goes up and never goes down, because every time a woman gets pregnant, a man leaves town.

I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that's when you get shot down.

He always had books. Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

mysterium tremendum et fascinans-- that stomach- flipping mix of awestruck fear and entrancing fascination.

Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious. They are like water, which gives life and growth and refreshment, but because it has always been abundant, we treat it cheaply. We waste it; we pollute it, and doctor it. Later we blame the quality of the water because we have misused it.

Of course, sweetie," his mom said. "We'll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you're so so special, Colin, and you can't possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy-" And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of.

That's why I love road trips, dude. It's like doing something without actually doing anything.

And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other—maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something.

You matter as much as the things that matter to you do.

He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened. He missed his imagined future.

It's a road trip! It's about adventure! . . . It's not like we have somewhere to go.

And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.

If there's one thing I know, it's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.

Colin Singleton’s distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

He missed her like crazycakes.

There's no reason whatsoever to drink eight glasses of water a day unless you, for whatever reason, particularly like the taste of water

Nothing really good will ever happen to me if I stay in Gutshot; and maybe that's true. But nothing really bad will ever happen, either, and I'll take that bargain any day.

I was thinking about this tonight, actually, that maybe I want strangers to think I'm cool since people who actually know me don't.

The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.

Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big fugging random mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.

As the staggered lines rushed past him, the space between what we predict and what will happen. And in that space, Colin thought, there was room enough to reinvent himself.

He let his mind wander. It went to a predictable place, and he missed her

You can't stop the future from coming

Schadenfreude,' Colin said. Finding pleasure in others' pain.

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.

The punch connected, but (1) Colin forgot to close his fist, so he was slapping not hitting, and (2) instead of slapping TOC, he ended up slapping Hassan flush across the cheek, whereupon Hassan finally succeeded in falling down.

there’s some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed up or distorted or whatever.

But monotony doesn't make for painlessness.

If I could do it all over again," he said, his speech slow and vaguely mangled by his massive lower lip, "I'd just let myself be trampled to death by the Satan Pig.

We’re invisible. I’ve never been here with someone else. It’s different being invisible with someone.

Son, if there's on thing I know," and Colin thought about how old people always like to tell you the one thing they know, "it's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

Je pense que je t'aime, she'd said numerically--'I think that I like you.' Or, 'I think that I love you.' The French verb aimer has two meanings. And that's why he liked her, and loved her. She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.

What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?

Colin: I figured something out. The future is unpredictable. Hassan: Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.

Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she'd taken the part of him that cried.

mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the fear and the fascination. The great and terrible awe.

We're on a Trail / a Trail of Tears / There's Dip on MY Chin / and We're Gonna Die Here.

But he wasn't crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she'd taken the part of him that cried.

She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.

He was a dying man looking down on the surgeons trying to save him.

It's that there's some people in this world who can just love and love and love no matter what.

Dating, after all, only ends one way: poorly. If you think about it...all romantic relationships end in either (1) breakup, (2) divorce, or (3) death.

You get caught in being something, being cool or special or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do

Formerly full of potential. Currently full of shit.

I love you so much and I just want you to love me like I love you

If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone, anyone, love me?

They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends; bitter.

And for the first time in his life, he smiled thinking about the always-coming infinite future stretching out before him.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

The world is turned upside down, I love it. It's like we're in a snow globe and God decided he wanted to see a blizzard so he shook us all the fug up.

but there was no denying her smile. That smile could end wars and cure cancer.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I’ve always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside—well, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?

I dont think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost...I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing. Like Katherine. That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created.

Because personally I think mattering is a piss-poor idea. I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that’s when you get shot down. The bigger a deal you are, the worse your life is.

That's why people grow weary of listening to Dumpees obsess over their troubles: getting dumped is predictable, repetitive, and boring. They want to stay friends; they feel smothered; it's always them and it's never you; and afterward, you're devastated and their relieved; it's over for them and just starting for you.

That’s what I was thinking about before you came. I was thinking about your mattering business. I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It’s so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do.” “You don’t even know why you need to be world-famous; you just think you do.

People thought he was a glutton for punishment, that he liked getting dumped. But it wasn't like that. He could just never see anything coming, and as he lay on the solid, uneven ground with Hassan pressing too hard on his forehead, Colin Singleton's distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

Colin, I hate to fulfill the Theorem, but I don't think we should be involved romantically. The problem is that I secretly in love with Hassan. I can't help myself. I hold your bony shoulder blades in my hands and think of his fleshy back. I kiss your stomach and I think of his awe-inspiring gut. I like you, Colin, I really do. But-I'm sorry. It's just not going to work. I hope we can still be friends. Sincerely, Lindsey Lee Wells P.S. Just kidding.

COCK-A-DOODLE DOO! HOW DO YOU LIKE IT FROMO THE OTHER END, YOU LITTLE FUGGER?" "Kafir, I can say it with confidence: Today is a day that no pigs will die. I'm not even allowed to eat the motherfuggers; I'm sure not going to kill one." "Amen," Colin answered.

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. This, right here, was the true abdominal snowman: it felt like something freezing in his stomach. "I love you so much and I just want you to love me like I love you," he said as softly as he could. "You don't need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but 'I love you.

It always happened like this: he would look and look for the keys to Satan’s Hearse and then finally he’d just give up and say, “Fine. I’ll take the fugging bus,” and on his way out the door, he’d see the keys. Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus; Katherines appear when you start to disbelieve the world contains another Katherine; and, sure enough, the Eureka moment arrived just as he began to accept it would never come.

You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you're pissed off because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn't like me anymore. You're such a sitzpinkler. You're so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not gettting left behind. Well, it doesn't work, kafir. I just - it's not just dumb, it's ineffective. Because then you're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you. There's your goddamned Theorem.

It was not the way Curve smelled that Colin liked - not exactly. It was the way the air smelled just as Lindsey began to jog away from him. The smell of perfume left behind. There's not a word for that in English, but Colin knew the French word: sillage. What Colin liked about Curve was not its smell on the skin but its sillage, the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.

I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about; real, good people who care about me, and this place. It’s so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do.

That's how I remember things, anyway. I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big fugging random mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky. Hassan told me once you think like that, too - that you see connections everywhere - so you're a natural born storyteller, it turns out.

But I just needed her so much and it never felt like enough and she wasn’t consistent and her inconsistency and my insecurity were this horrible match for each other, but I still loved her, because all of me was wrapped up in her, because I’d put all my eggs in someone else’s basket, and in the end, after 343 days, I was left with an empty basket and this gnawing endless hole in my gut, but then now I find myself deciding to remember her as a good person with whom I had some good times until we, both of us, got ourselves into an ineradicably bad situation.

As the staggered lines rushed past him, he thought about the space between what we remember and what happened, the space between what we predict and what will happen. And in that space, Colin thought, there was room enough to reinvent himself - room enough to make himself into something other than a prodigy, to remake his story better and different - room enough to be reborn again and again. A snake killer, an Archduke, a slayer of TOCs - a genius, even. There was room enough to be anyone - anyone except whom he'd already been, for if Colin had learned one thing from Gutshot, it's that you can't stop the future from coming. And for the first time in his life, he smiled thinking about the always-coming infinite future stretching out before him.

I'm full of shit. I’m never myself. I've got a Southern accent around the oldsters; I’m a nerd for graphs and deep thoughts around you; I’m Miss Bubbly Pretty Princess with Colin. I’m nothing. The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real. Your problem is - how did you say it - that you’re not significant?” “Don’t matter. I don’t matter.” “Right, matter. Well, but at least you can get to the part where you don’t matter. Things about you, and things about Colin, and things about Hassan and Katrina, are either true or they aren’t true. Katrina is bubbly. Hassan is hilarious. But I’m not like that. I’m what I need to be at any moment to stay above the ground but below the radar. The only sentence that begins with ‘I’ that’s true of me is I’m full of shit.

Hassan said, "I'm a Kuwaiti exchange student; my dad's an oil baron." Colin shook his head, "Too obvious. I'm a Spaniard. A refugee. My parents were murdered by Basque separatists." "I don't know if Basque is a thing or a person and neither will they, so no. Okay, I just got to America from Honduras. My name is Miguel. My parents made a fortune in bananas, and you are my bodyguard, because the banana workers' union wants me dead." Colin shot back, "That's good, but you don't speak Spanish. Okay, I was abducted by Eskimos in the Yukon Terr-no, that's crap. We're cousins from France visiting the United States for the first time. It's out high school graduation trip." "That's boring, but we're out of time. I'm the English speaker?" asked Hassan. "Yeah, fine." "Okay, they're coming," said Hassan. "What's your name?" "Pierre." "Okay. I'm Salinger, pronounced SalinZHAY." ........ "He has Tourette's?" asked Katrina. "MERDE!" (Shit) shouted Colin. "Yes," said Hassan excitedly. "same word both language, like hemorrhoid. That one we learned yesterday because Pierre had the fire in his bottom. He has Toorettes. And the hemorrhoid. But, is good boy. "Ne dis pas que j'ai des hemorroides! Je n'ai pas d'hemorroide," (Don't say I have hemorrhoids! I don't have hemorrhoids.) Colin shouted, at once trying to continue the game and get Hassan on to a different topic. Hassan looked at Colin, nodded knowingly, and then told Katrina, "He just said that your face, it is beautiful like the hemorrhoid.

Dude," said Hassan softly. "Khanzeer." (Arabic:Pig) "Matha, al-khanazeer la yatakalamoon araby?" Colin asked. (Arabic: What, pigs don't speak Arabic?" "That's no pig," answered Hassan in Enlgish. "That's a goddamned monster." The pig stopped its rotting and looked up at them. "I mean. Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of Iblis." (Arabic: Satan) It was clear now the pig could see them. Colin could see the black in its eyes. "Stop cursing. The feral hog shows a remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech," he mumbled, quoting from the book. "That's a bunch of bullshit," Hassan said, and then the pig took two lumbering steps towards them, and Hassan said, "Okay. Or not. Fine. No cursing. Listen. Satan Pig. We're cool. We don't want to shoot you. The guns are for show, dude." "Stand up so he knows we're bigger than he is," Colin said. "Did you read that in the book?" Hassan asked as he stood. "No, I read it in a book about grizzly bears." "We're gonna get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it's a grizzly bear?