The Museum of Intangible Things

Perfect should never be a goal. Perfect just happens if you let it.

You need to be flagrantly insouciant. You care way too much. And because of that you will be paralyzed for life and miss out on everything.

I think there could be different versions of truth, he says. You choose your truth, and then you build your life around it.

Having a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die

There is such a thing as a shy extrovert. People think extroverts are all loud and mouthy, like Rebecca Forman, but that's not true. The definitions of extrovert and introvert have do with how you process the world and from where you draw your energy. I'm shy, but I process my world by talking about it. Which makes me an extrovert. But I don't talk about it with just anyone. I have to talk about it with Zoe.

I have left behind what tethered me to the lake. The sadness. The self-pity. The dark tentacles of the murky sea monster only I could see. And I have come to appreciate the ocean. How the sun and salt together can leave things weightless, easy, and smooth around the edges. Like sea glass and driftwood.

She really needs to believe she's special. I admire that about her. Because you have to believe you're special before you can do anything special

And I learn that facing your greatest fear is liberating. You no longer have to worry about it, because it has already happened. And you have survived. I want to face some more fears, it feels so freaking liberating. I want to just jump off the freaking Brooklyn Bridge.

I am a freshwater girl. I live on the lake, and in New Jersey, that's rare. The girls on the other side of town have swimming pools, and the girls in the south have the seashore. Other girls are dry, breezy, salty, and bleached. I, on the other hand, am dark, grounded, heavy, and wet. Fed by springs, tangled in soft fernlike seaweed, I am closer to the earth. Saturated to the bone. I know it, and so do the freshwater boys, who prefer the taste of salt.

There is no stronger bond than the one that gets you through childhood.

How can anyone grow up with parents and still believe that love conquers all? What teenager on the planet has parents who are still in love?

My best friend Zoe has a perfect rear end and stick legs, and long, silky black hair. She is obviously not descended from William Penn. There are no dowdy pilgrims in her ancestry. Whereas I am grounded and mired in this place, she's like milkweed fluff that will take off with the first strong breeze. Stronger than fluff, though. She's like a bullet just waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

You are the only girl worth pursuing. And that's why no one pursues you." -Danny

None of them are wholesome. There are straight men, and there are gay men, but there are no wholesome men.

No one can understand exactly what grief feels like for another person, because depending on your relationship to the deceased, you feel your grief differently from everyone else on the planet." -Hannah

He smiles at me, feeling the same elation I am, I can tell. I can tell because the feeling hangs between us like a rope. When you share a feeling with someone it takes on matter and weight. Even if you're the only ones who can sense it, it becomes a tangible thing with properties like shape and weight and heat." -Hannah

So maybe God is orgasm.

It's like being dropped into a black hole. A vacuum of existence. When I turn around, I will be instantly orphaned because I'll know no one can hack it. And no one is in charge. But it's worse than being orphaned because at the same time I am tethered to his failure. His problems are tied around my heart. I will never get away. I am afraid. But I turn around.

But perception becomes truth if you can get people to see it your way. Truth is a much more fluid concept than you choose to believe it is" -Danny

I think there could be different versions of the truth. You choose your truth, and then you build your life around it." -Danny

We drive northwest for an hour to Michigan. Michigan is pretty much like rural New Jersey, except it's flattened out and well planned and pristine. Michigan would be New Jersey if you ran over it with a steamroller, excavated everything, and then put it back in neat rows with lots of space for everyone to move around in. It is practical and pretty, and it's a place where nothing spontaneous happens. This is a place where nothing happens unless people sit around and have a meeting about it first. The people are mostly white, which is weird, and the squirrels are black, also weird.

How can you have memories if you don't have the audacity to create them?

muted tones of puce--the color of tongue and bologna

Ms Brennan is telling the very few people who attended an educational event: "You are warriors against the cult of stupidity that is taking over our nation.

There is such thing as a shy extrovert. People think extroverts are all loud and mouthy...but that's not true. The definitions of extrovert and introvert have to do with how you process the world and from where you draw your energy. I'm shy, but I process my world by talking about it. Which makes me an extrovert. But I don't talk about it with just anyone." -Hannah

My retelling of events to Zoe is what grounds them, shapes them, makes them real. If I can't tell Zoe about kissing Danny Spinelli, it didn't happen.

I come from a long line of downtrodden women who marry alcoholics. All the way back to my Lenni Lanape great-great-great-(lots of greats) grandmother, Scarlet Bird, a red-haired New Jersey Indian who married William Penn. I know this to be true because of the red highlights in my hair, and because, if you ever see the statue of William Penn in Philadelphia, the one that dictates the height of all the buildings in its perimeter, you will notice, if you look at him from behind, that he and I have the exact same rear end.