82 Quotes by Bill Konigsberg

"It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant)."

"I tried to imagine myself part of a pack of guys who picked up local public school girls on weekends. It was hard to envision, but I was definitely willing to try. Not the pickup part. Just the being in a posse part."

"He's a good looking guy, no question. All bluster and confidence while I'm whatever the opposite of that is. Apologies and embarrassment. Awkwardness and sorrow. First dead in a zombie apocalypse"

"Guilt, she’d explained, was useful because a person could learn from it and do the right thing next time. Shame, on the other hand, was useless,"

"The world will make you vulnerable. If you're acting like you're not, that's what you're doing. Acting"

"We drive, and I'm thinking about users and abusers, like my mom says. The time my dad swung me around by my feet and I got hurt, and how he told me to man up. Who came up with that? Who came up with all those rules and ideas about how a guy's gotta be?"

"That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn’t. I wasn’t big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you’d just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting."

"A thought came to me. What do I think about the date with Rafe? Here I am thinking about what everyone else would think, and I haven’t taken even a second to have my own reaction. Weird."

"Ben, looking deep into his soulful, kind eyes. “Should we try it?” Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I can’t figure out any way to get closer to you, and I feel it. Like I want to get closer. It’s not sex I want, it’s just …"

"And during, I realized that the labels didn’t matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically."