Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

"I know you can't see it, not you, Ed, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot you'll understand it this once, because even now I want you to see it. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but there's still something I can show you. You know I want to be a director, but you never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up."

"And then like a song we'd forgotten was even on the mix, you stepped into the house and my whole life."

"But before, not so long ago - my own rose from prom still OK on the mirror, dried but not a corpse - you were just Ed Slaterton, jocky hero, handsome in the student newspaper and star of a million strands of gossip. Now Annette was a person to me, standing right there, and not just an oh-my-God-have-you-heard, and I tried to put it together in my head, the print and the negative, the boyfriend and the celebrity shadow, like Theodora Sire sat next to me in history, borrowing pencils, but was still a movie star above my bed. Because as you came out of the dark to me, you were the boy I was kissing and wanted to kiss more, back to find me at a party like anybody might do, but you were Ed Slaterton too, and not the cad you are now, but just Ed Slaterton, co-captain, with a beer in your hand and Jillian Beach on your arm."

"If he’s not gay and he hung out with you the whole time, he wanted to be. It’s boyfriend or want to be boyfriend or I guess gay. Those are the choices."

"Another gift, another secret, another time to lean in and kiss me."

"Phillip Murray and Wanda Saxton meet in the last scene under the rainy awning, their wrong wife and fiance finally story-lined away, and walk out together into the downpour - we know from the first scene, Christmas eve, that both of them like walking in the rain but don't have anybody who will do it with them - and it's the miracle of the ending."

"Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful."

"We thought we had time. I waved but couldn't answer, because I was finally letting myself grin as wide as I'd wanted all afternoon, all evening, every sec of every minute with you, Ed. Shit, I guess I already loved you then."

"There were a million things, everything, I didn't know. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy. I took this thing I'm giving you back, this thing you gave me as the star we were waiting for finally emerged."

"You winked, took the change. I should have seen it, Ed, as a sign that you were unreliable. Instead, I saw it as a sign of charming, which is why I didn't break it off right then and there."

"I'm nothing, not a single thing. The only particle I had, the only tiny thing raising me up, is that I was Ed Slaterton's girlfriend, loved by you for like ten secs, and who cares, so what, and not anymore so how embarrassing for me."

"I'm writing it in a letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much."

"I'm dumping the whole box back into your life Ed, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it's you, Ed, who is getting dumped."

"I'm a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I'm like every single miserable moron I've scorned, and pretended I didn't recognize. I'm all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I'm not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing."

"I'd ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you. And I did. But that right there was why it was doomed."

"The file clanked against me, my stupid idea nobody would have gotten had I ever done it. You even wouldn't have gotten it, Ed, I thought, watching her go. It's why we broke up, so here it is. Ed, how could you?"

"It will be a very long time before I trust you ever, ever - OK, I trust you again."

"Call me later, you’d said, so I could call you later, at night, and it is those nights I miss you, Ed, the most, on the phone, you beautiful bastard."

"There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark."

"Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you're the one keeping them, I'll be the one feeling better."