Frank Chimero:

If something can be anything, it usually becomes everything.

Paul Ford:

Everything is so anticlimactic.

Tavi Gevinson:

Nothing lasts forever, of course, but Nothing doesn't resonate with a teenager the way Forever does, because, for better or worse, it's hard to imagine ever not feeling this way, being this person, having this life.

Edward Hoagland:

Friendship provokes us to pause a moment, shrug off our workaday carapace, and just be flesh and blood. Like a guardian spirit, a friend may ask and then reorient us a bit, a leverage like New Year's Eve. Traction, context: to remain among the living, hugged and germane, is the idea. When we blossom, does our bouquet have a scent? Life is not a dogfight. We pile together like puppies for warmth and sniffing, or wriggle, wag, and stilt-walk instead of quarreling. Make me not feel nightmarishly alone, or even lonesome. People who for one reason or another can't boast of having enough friends will enlarge the circle by imagining they register in the lives of folk who barely acknowledge them with a nod.

Natalie Angier:

We lavish $70 billion a year on weddings, more than we spend on pets, coffee, toothpaste and toilet paper combined.

Tim Kreider's married friend:

It's not as if being married means you're any less alone.