All right, Jeffy. Here are some big-boy pants. Put ’em on and crank out fifty miles for me. By the way, the iPod only has one playlist on it. Press play when you leave the starting line, okay?

Right. So in order to become lifelong thinkers, all we have to do is stop thinking for ourselves for the next three years. I’m feeling better and better about this place by the minute.

And maybe this whole thing has taught me something else about what kindness is for. Because, looking back at this year, I still basically did fail when I tried to protect everybody. But that doesn’t mean my efforts didn’t matter. Maybe kindness spreads slowly, and even fails for a while, but then sort of seeps through again and keeps moving outward, until you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a ring of fellow hamster owners who used to be your enemies.

It’s all just hormones, my friend. You might as well just say you’re in testosterone with somebody. And if you’re really lucky, she might be in estrogen with you.

I wasn’t sure what my path would be, but I knew I didn’t want to be like any of them. Each, in their own way, spent life being ruled by the exact same things they feared.

Annette had kissed me. Who would’a thunk it?

Mr. Watras asked me whether I was practicing, and I told him I was practicing my tissue basketball skills.

The only time I can ever remember Steven crying over any of it was after my treatment, when I tried to use my foot on his bass drum pedal, and we realized I could never play a drum set.

I tucked him in with his stuffed-animal pet dog – cleverly named Dog-Dog, by the way.

Renee was beautiful, but she was my friend now. On the other hand, Annette was my friend, but now she was beautiful. makes about as much sense as anything ever does with girls.