Matthew Quick

It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once__aybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava. They both jumped up off the couch and wrapped their arms around me even though it meant touching each other. We stayed like that for a long time, and it felt good__lmost enough to justify everything that had precipitated it, but not quite.

After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now - because Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with.

...I am uncontrollable and dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has never been locked up and doesn't understand what it feels like to lose control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he doesn't ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day--the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and...

A lot of female teachers do this - flirt with male students. I wonder if that's the only way they know how to interact with men. Like they use their sexuality to get what they want.

Nobody knows anything when they are in their midtwenties.

Remember _ it's a long race and you can always outwork talent in the end.

We really don't get to understand /why/ most of the time. It's true.

I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that adults in my life didn't know anymore than I did.

That's basically the mantra of Herr Silverman's teaching - think for yourself and do what's right for you, but let others do the same.

It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once__aybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava.

PS. Docendo discimus. (Latin. By teaching, we learn.)

We're celebrating our freedom. We're celebrating our ability to be kids when everything is trying to take that away from us. It's a choice, Ty. We can do whatever we want.

Your mother is risking a lot, because she believes in you.

I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.

And I understood why he didn__ need friends or to be accepted at our shitty racist high school, because he had his music, and that was so much better than anything we had to offer.

I__ a screwed-up person who no longerknows how to communicate with the people I love. But I meant everything I told you in my letter.

I believe in happy endings, and i feel this movie has advanced long enough.

Haven't you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?