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Isn't it like, totally unbelievable that we even exist? So it won't be a tragedy when we don't exist anymore! It's just cool, really cool, that we happened at all.

They had one summer on that pier twenty-five years ago which felt like it was going to last forever, because that's how all summers must feel when you're about to turn fifteen, that's the age when friendship is like joining the mafia: you can't leave it, you know too much.

And you don't know what to do with shitloads of money? Damn, you're a bad teenager. Buy a sports car! And drugs! Start a zoo! I would have bought a bunch of monkeys. You can't be in a bad mood if you've got a bunch of monkeys. Especially if you've also got drugs.

Life is long, but it moves at high speed, a single step here or there can be enough to ruin everything.

It's hard to tell a story, particularly when it doesn't end happily for everyone.

"But why do you have two, then?"

"Typically smart of men to have their own spare parts."

"Typical of men to need spare parts."

You smell like the best thing in the world, and the best thing in the world smells like you.

It's hard to tell a story, any story, but it's almost impossible if it's your own. You always start at the wrong end, always say too much or too little, always miss the most important parts.

It's incredibly difficult being a mom, Louisa. It's difficult being a human being.

The cancer went on for Ted's whole childhood. Yet the most remarkable thing about losing a parent is that you don't even need to miss them for their loss to be felt. The basic function of a parent is just to exist. You have to be there, like ballast in a boat, because otherwise your child capsizes.

He didn't want to be an adult. Because adults like him don't understand that adults have to be adults so that children can be children.

When rich people sleep outdoors, it isn't homelessness, it's camping!

Maybe Joar was bigger in the painting because that's how you saw him. Fish felt big to me, even though I was much taller. People think it's bad if someone makes you feel small, but it really isn't.

It's hard to say "I love you" when you're fourteen years old. And completely impossible to dare to whisper: "Don't hurt yourself, because you'd be hurting me too."

How crazy is that? Being able to paint LAUGHTER?

Art is so big, so unfathomable, that it teaches us to mourn for strangers.

Drowned from the inside. A child's brain is so imaginative, Louisa heard this but didn't grow up afraid of alcohol, just horribly afraid of swimming.

That's all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn't think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward, you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person's breath against your neck. That's the only courageous thing a person can do

"Were you a ... couple?" she asks tentatively.

"No."

"Because he was in love with someone else?"

Ted nods softly, his chin heavy with loss, but not bitterness.

"We were as close to a couple as you can get, maybe. It's probably hard to understand."

Louisa shakes her head slowly.

"No. It isn't hard at all. You loved each other so much that you wer scared of accidentally breaking each other."