Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling. Because you’re feeling too much. And you can’t always control the things you do when you’re feeling too much.

poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get—and never would get.

The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.

Sometimes, I think everyone is like the people in that painting, everyone lost in their own private universes of pain or sorrow or guilt, everyone remote and unknowable. The painting reminds me of you. It breaks my heart.

And anyway, being smart isn’t everything. People just make fun of you. 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.’”

It was an art book filled with the work of Mexican painters. He seemed so adult, not like a fifteen-year-old at all. Somehow, even his long hair that he didn’t like to comb made him seem more adult.

Summer had come and gone. And the world was ending.

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.

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.

this sad. I have never been this sad. I have never been this sad