Quotes from Blake Nelson

Life is ridiculous. It's not our fault.

But I think Cybil was my biggest fan. She cut out my articles and hung them in her locker and we were always cracking up how if you wrote the simplest, most obvious thing in the world people thought you were a genius.

Life is ridiculous. It's not our fault.

No matter what I do now, there are certain doors I have already closed, certain opportunities I'll never get back. There's nothing to be done, I guess. It is what it is.

And then I feel something else. Something that's totally new. I feel the tiniest sensation of hope. Maybe my life isn't over. Maybe my life has just begun.

But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe that is exactly the thing that made you a man: the ability to function with the worst possible secrets in your brain. Which was why so many grown-up men seemed so ridiculous. They never felt that responsibility. They were untested, unproven; they were boys in grown-up clothes.

Normal people never like me.

On Friday night, my dad wants to have a family activity. so we go ice-skating. It's me and my mom and my dad and my sister. It's like we're all together. It's like a beautiful dream. It's like the Disney Channel. Except that my dad and I hate each other. And my mom hates herself. And my sister is humiliated by the bunch of us. And I'm secretly waiting for the inevitable devastation of our entire civilization. But except for that.

You need other people, Madeline. There's a great freedom in knowing that. And accepting that. And letting people in. Letting them help you.

It was weird because my first couple stories had been so easy. Now it was like, the more you did it, the harder it became. But in another way, it was addicting. It was like gambling, every time you'd start another one you'd think this time I'm going to get it right....

It's hard to imagine talking to Lucy. But I can imagine sleeping with her. I have been imagining it quite regularly. I can't stop imagining it. Maybe it's time for my first Lucy Branch, my first truly physical relationship. And why do I assume it would be a bad thing? Maybe it's better with someone different from you. I could teach her how fluorocarbons affect the ozone. She could teach me about oral sex. We would both become better people.

I said I looked like a dork and she said that was true, but there was something classic about my dorkiness. I was so open and my awkwardness and embarrassment were so clear and understandable. I was extremely watchable.

I stood there, watching her. The whole world was a dream, I realized. Everyone was acting in a bad soap opera. The whole world was one big FOX TV show.

I watch Stewart. He has the most interesting face. It is beautiful, young, almost childlike, and yet with a power and authority in his features. In another time he would have been a young warrior, a Lost Prince exiled from his kingdom. But he's from this time, this place, so he's just some "at risk" kid who can't find a place for himself in the straight world.

He holds me. I am his in a way he probably isn't even aware of. Boys shouldn't know what power they have. They would panic probably or just mess things up. But boys are who you give yourself to. Not your parents or your teachers or your "future". You give yourself to a boy. And then you go for long walks at night and think about them and wonder what they will do to you in the end.

This is where I want to be now, alone with myself. Because I know that something has happened to me tonight, something that I'm not going to understand at first, something I need to just absorb and think about and get used to. This is going to be hard for me. I can't control this. I can't stop what it will do to me. But I want it. I want to be inside it, to feel it, forever.

É o que têm os segredos, acabam por nos enlouquecer. Mas enlouquecem-nos mesmo. Isolam-nos dos outros. Separam-nos da nossa tribo. Acabam por nos destruir. A não ser que uma pessoa seja forte. A não ser que uma pessoa seja muito, muito forte.

It's so weird being straight. You have no defenses. Shit happens and you have to feel it. You have no choice.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, it turns out. Who knew?

She had no place on this earth. There was no place where she was comfortable, no place she could relax, no place where she felt safe.

All the girls stared at me with hatred in their eyes. It was a big drama that had to be acted out. But deep down, nobody really cared. The other girls didn't care about Jennifer. Jennifer didn't care about me. I didn't care about anything. Everyone was so full of crap.

It's like we've entered a separate reality. Like now it's just the two of us, nothing else matters, no one exists.

But I let myself love him anyway. I let myself love him with all my heart. I give myself that. I tell myself I deserve it.

Boys shouldn't know what power they have. They would panic probably, or just mess things up. But boys are who you give yourself to. Not your parents, or your teachers, or your "future." You give yourself to a boy. And then you go for long walks at night and think about them and wonder what they will do to you in the end.