The Spectacular Now

Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat.

Life is spectacular. Forget the dark things. Take a drink and let time wash them away to where ever time washes away to.

Childhood was a fantastic country to live in.

Just remember this- weird's good. Embrace the weird, dude. Enjoy it because it's never going away.

Nothing lasts," she says, and there's a little crack in her voice. "You think it's going to. You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.

Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now

She's drenched and bedraggled, but I've never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That's how I know I'll have to give her up.

It's superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There's this sense of being super-alive. You're in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don't know about. Unlike them, you're alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what's going to happen.

See, I do have a future to give her after all, just not one that includes me.

She's different from the girls I'm used to dating. She doesn't get tired of my stories and jokes or expect me to start reading her mind. She doesn't want me to dress better or put highlights in my hair or serious up. I'm not a lifestyle accessory to her. I'm a necessity. I'm the guy that's going to crack open her cocoon. She doesn't need to change me - she needs me to change her. At least until her little butterfly wings get strong enough to fly away.

We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.

To hell with tomorrow. To hell with all problems and barriers. Nothing matters but the Spectacular Now.

You're nothing but a product. And what's this product called? Emptiness, dude, that's what it's called. And for the rest of your life, they sell you over and over, right to the end when they package you one last time and plant you in the ground.

Books seem a little old-fashioned, but hey, I can do old-fashioned if it's good.

You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.

It's more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it's too late to ask what it was.

I don't believe in that - the husband and wife having to be just alike. I think it's better if they kind of offset each other. Like if they have these different dimensions they can bring to each other.

They've drummed the miraculous out of you, but you don't want it to be like that. You want the miraculous. You want everything to still be new.

That type of dream just kind of wears out with time like a favorite old T-shirt. One day, it's nothing but tatters and all you can do is throw it over on the rag pile with the others.

She might be the only girl I've ever met who still hasn't learned to sacrifice bodily comfort for fashion's sake.

Have you ever started to wave at someone and then realized they weren’t really waving at you, so you abort and go for a head scratch instead? That’s how I felt.

Finally, she's like, "I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don't always know what to do. That doesn't mean they don't love you.

Beauty’s all around me right here. It’s not in a textbook. It’s not in an equation. I mean, take the sunlight … The colors flow into your lungs, into your bloodstream. You are the colors.

it's fine to live in the now. but the best thing about now is that there's another one tomorrow. i'm going to start making them count.

Our whole society's a training ground for addicts.

Besides, I’m not looking to get saved. I’m only going with her because it’s what you do when you’re in a relationship. You know? You slide into the third pew from the front and sit there thinking about how desperate all these people are to feel like something loves them. They’ll believe all kinds of hocus-pocus. But your girlfriend likes it, and you like her, so you do it. It’s called compromise. The only way you’re going to get something to last in this world is to work at it.

We’re toasting the chlorophyll rising in our bodies, catching the energy from the universe. Nobody’s ever been young like we are right at this moment.

Maybe Marcus was wrong. Maybe a single person can save the world. I'll bet I could. I could save the whole world - for a night.

That's how our system works. It's a giant con game. One thing gets old, then you have to buy the next thing that gets old, then the next thing. Our whole society's a training ground for addicts.

I like you so much," she says between kisses. And I can tell she wants to say love instead of like, not because she really does love me but because she just wants to say it. Of course, she can't, though. Not when I haven't said it first.