this is why we call people exes, I guess—because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it’s too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it’s not, because there’s no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.

I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it’s not.

when things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it’s because a little piece gets lost—the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.

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“I’ve never known before what it feels like to want someone—not to want to hook up with them or whatever, but to WANT them, want them. And now I do.”

The writing here is great.

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It is also hilarious.

This book is fucking spectacular.

I realize this is not, like, boyish. I realize that properly speaking guys should only think about sex and the acquisition of it, and that they should run crotch-first toward every girl who likes them and etc. But: The part that I enjoy most is not the doing, but the noticing. Noticing the way she smells like oversugared coffee, and the difference between her smile and her photographed smile, and the way she bites her lower lip, and the pale skin of her back. I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance—I don’t want to have to acknowledge that I am noticing. I don’t want to talk about it do stuff about it.

or ttyl. bitch, you’re not actually talking. that would require actual vocal contact. or you think that looks like a heart? if you do, that’s only because you’ve never seen a scrotum.
(rofl! what? are you really rolling on the floor laughing? well, please stay down there a sec while I KICK YOUR ASS.)

isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there’s anything stupider than buddy lists, it’s lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it’s not like anyone is laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person’s tongue does. loll. loll. i can’t think anymore. loll. loll!

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This book is absolutely fantastic.

i am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.
those seem to be the two choices. everything else is just killing time.

I don’t really understand the point of crying. Also I feel that crying is almost—like, aside from the deaths of relatives or whatever—totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has sad from failure to follow one of the rules.

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Next. I hope this has a good, captivating story. On the Road lacked that.