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"I used to tell people my name was Dan. I mean, you know, I just dropped two letters. But I stopped doing that. It wasn't honest. And anyway, I always got found out. And I felt like a liar and an idiot. I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling that. "

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Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming like it were a way of life.

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He looked a little fragile-but he wasn't. He was discipled and tough and knowledgeable and he didn't pretend to be stupid and ordinary. He was neither of those things.

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"..The world is a dark place. Conrad's right about that."
"Maybe your world, Ari, but not mine."

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He introduced me to his father, the english professor. I'd never met a Mexican-American man who was an English professor. I didn't know they existed.

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He was young and handsome and easygoing and it seemed like a part of him was still a boy. He seemed like a man who was in love with being alive. So different from my father, who had always kept his distance from the world. There was a darkness in my father that I didn't understand. Dante's father didn't have any darkness in him. Even his black eyes seemed to be full of light.

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I'd heard that phrase, nice to meet you, a thousand times. When Dante had said that to me, he'd sounded real. But when I said it, I felt stupid and unoriginal. I wanted to hide somewhere.

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I got to thinking that poems were like people.Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get-and never would get.

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When we'd walked in, the place had been all chaos. But when he finished, everything was in its place.
Dante's world had order.

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He was so perfect in his newly organized room, the western sun streaming in, his face in the light and the book in his hand as if it was meant to be there, in his hands, and only in his hands.

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I liked his voice as he read the poem as if he had written it:
He's dead
the dog won't have to
sleep on the potatoes
anymore to keep them
from freezing

he's dead
the old bastard-

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When Dante read the word "bastard" he smiled. I knew he loved saying it because it was a word he was not allowed not to use, a word that was banned. But here in his room, he could read that word and make it his.

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And he read poems. I didn't worry about understanding them. I didn't care about what they meant. I didn't care because what mattered is that Dante's voice felt real. And I felt real. Until Dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren't.

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That afternoon, I learned two new words. "Inscrutable." And "friend." Words were different when they lived inside you.

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"...My dad says it's all right if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, 'Dante, you're an intellectual. That's who you are. Don't be ashamed of that."
I notice his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
"Ari, I'm trying not to be ashamed. Only, Dante knew why.
And I didn't.
Dante. I really liked him. I really, really liked him.

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When I looked through the telescope, Dante began explaining what I was looking at. I didn't hear a word. Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I'd ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and-I don't know-it made me aware that there was something inside me that mattered.

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As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, "Someday, I'm going to discover all the secrets of the universe."
That made me smile. What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?"
"I'll know what to do with them," he said. "Maybe change the world."
I believed him.

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Dante's answer made sense to me. If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. I think that's what he was saying. I had a philosopher's name. What was my answer? Why didn't I have an answer?
And was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.

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And it seemed to me that Dante's face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.
Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

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"When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I'd get up look in the mirror and my eyes were sad."

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There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that's the way he saw the world or if that's the way he saw my world.
I stared at the sketch because there was something true about it.

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And I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn't like themselves and others did. Maybe that's just the way it was.

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I though of my chair and how it really was a portrait of me. I was a chair. I felt sadder than I'd ever felt.

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And even though I knew I was named after my grandfather, I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I couldn't give.
So I renamed myself Ari.
If I switched the letter, my name was Air.
I thought it'd be great to be the air.
I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

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"I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?" I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. "I don't know," I said. "Tomorrow."

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-I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.
...
-I hated my mom for a minute because she told me I didn't have friends.
-I want to know about my brother. If I knew more about him, would I hate him?
-My father held me in his arms when I had a fever and I wanted him to hold me in his arms forever.
- The problem is not that I don't love my mother and father. The problem is that I don't know how to love them.
-Dante is the first friend I've ever had. That scares me.
- I think that if Dante really knew me, he wouldn't like me.

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"It was that damned bird,"I said. "We can blame it all on the bird. The whole thing."
"I'm done with birds."
"No you're not."
...
"No more birds for me."
"I like birds," I said.

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As I stared out, I looked for birds.
I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.

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When she left the room, I broke down and sobbed. I had never been this sad. I had never been this sad. I had never been this sad. My heart hurt even more than my legs.

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I hated living in the small and claustrophobic atmosphere of my house. It didn't feel like home anymore. I felt like an unwanted guest. I hated being waited on all the time. I hated that my parents were so patient with me. I did. That's the truth . They didn't do anything wrong. They were just trying to help me. But I hated them. And I hated Dante too.
And I hated myself for hating them. So there it was my own vicious cycle. My own private universe of hate.

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-Walking everyday! I am in love with that thought.
- I don't know who I am.
...
-Somehow I'd hoped that this would be the summer that I would discover that I was alive. The world my mom and dad said was out there waiting for me. That world doesn't actually exist.

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I kept seeing Dante standing in the rain holding a bird with a broken wing. I couldn't tell if he was smiling or not. What if he'd lost his smile?
I bit my lip so I wouldn't cry.
"I love the rain," my mother whispered.
I love it too. I love it too.
I felt like I was the saddest boy in the universe. Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.

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It was strange to feel like the Ari I used to be. Except that wasn't totally true. The Ari I used to be didn't exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn't exist yet.

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I'd figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn't like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.

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I was in love with the innocence of dogs, the purity of their affection. They didn't know enough to hide their feelings. They existed. A dog was a dog. There was such a simple elegance about being a dog that I envied.

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It was as if my eyes were a camera and I was photographing the moment, knowing that I would keep that photograph forever.

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Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer morning could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

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I wondered if my smile was big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

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Even though summers were mostly made of sun and heat, summers for me were about the storms that came and went. And left me feeling alone. Did all boys feel alone? The summer rain was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

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I wanted to tell them that I never knew people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around.

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Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed. Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.

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This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it.

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¨Listen! The Hate U-the letter U- Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. T-H-U-G L-I-F-E. Meaning what society give us as youth, it bites them in the ass when we wild out.¨

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¨...I got tired of choosing between lights and food.¨

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¨Funny, huh? The hospital fired her ´cause she was sick¨
It´s silent in the Impala except for Tupac asking who do you believe in? I don't know.

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When I was twelve, my parents had two talks with me. One was the usual birds and bees. ... The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me. ... "...Only speak when they speak to you." I knew it must've been serious. Daddy has the biggest mouth of anybody I know, and if he said to be quiet, I needed to be quiet.

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Khalil stares at the sky as if he hopes to see God. His mouth is open like he wants to scream. I scream loud enough for the both of us.

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"No, no, no," is all I can say, like I'm a year old and it's the only word I know.

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His body stiffens, and he's gone. I hope he sees God.

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I'm lying in bed. Khalil is lying in the county morgue.

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Her blood mixed in with the water, and all you could see was a red river flowing down the street.
She looked scared. We were ten, we didn't know what happened after you died. Hell, I still don't know, and she was forced to find out, even if she didn't wanna find out.
I know she didn't. Just like Khalil didn't.

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I always said that if i saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down.
Now I am that person, and I'm too afraid to speak.

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That's when I realized Williamson is one world and Garden Heights is another, and I have to keep them seperate.

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One of my baby photos smiles back at me, permanently etched on his arm with Something to live for, something to die for written beneath it...Love letters in the simplest form.

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God gave you a brain. You don't need theirs.

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¨laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one,¨

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¨I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in their choice of his enemies.¨

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¨He is all of my art to me now,¨ said the painter gravely. ¨I something think , Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world´s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for, second is appearance of a personality for art also.

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¨The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don´t take away the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.¨

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¨There is no such thing as good influence, Mr.Gray. All influence is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of view.¨

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“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for.

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¨...to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul...You know more than you know, just as you know less than you want to know.¨

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¨Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

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"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose?¨

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¨Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.¨

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“ Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes. ”

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¨I never talk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.¨

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“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”

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¨A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

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I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

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"When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."

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¨A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them¨

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"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more wonderful thing than art." "They are both simply forms of imitation,"

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“You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away.

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“He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.”

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¨Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.¨