"It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them."
Finch is bipolar, though his diagnosis doesn't come until the end of the novel. Because his illness cannot be seen or physically observed in any way by an outsider, his family doesn't believe that he is sick. They just think he's a troubled kid who needs to get over himself. In this excerpt Finch is wishing that he bore some physical manifestation of his disorder so that the people around him would finally see that he's not making anything up for the sake of attention. He's hurting, but no one is sympathetic because it's easy for them to overlook. Niven challenges the reader to think about the sincerity of human nature, how it is easy to ignore things that aren't immediately obvious.
"'No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.'"
By the end of the novel, Violet has worked through her grief from the loss of her sister. She had seriously struggled to move on, but Finch pushed her to get back to her old self and embrace her life in the world of the living. He noticed her, looked after her, and sympathized with her. In this moment, when he brings her flowers, they count for more than just pretty flowers on a cold day. Finch has brought her through to the end of her season of grief, and has given her beautiful, living things during the cold, barren months.
"'You deserve better. I can't promise you I'll stay around, not because I don't want to. It's hard to explain. I'm a fuckup. I'm broken, and no one can fix it. I've tried. I'm still trying. I can't love anyone because it's not fair to anyone who loves me back. I'll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt Roamer. But I can't promise I won't pick you apart, piece by piece, until you're in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you're getting into before getting involved.'"
At the outset of their relationship Finch is hesitant to commit to Violet. He likes her, but he's afraid of himself. Because of his depression, he doesn't trust himself to maintain a healthy relationship with her. He's terrified of hurting her as a result of the broken parts of his brain. Finch is preemptively trying to stop something before it's had a chance to begin—it is a fear response. He can't bear the thought of hurting Violet, so part of him would prefer to push her away. He thinks of himself as someone messy, someone broken, who will have the same effect on Violet.
"'Listen, I'm the freak. I'm the weirdo. I'm the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don't make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I'm not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I'm a person.'"
This quote represents the human need to label and categorize the human population, a result of which is the alienation of those who are different from the norm. Finch is extremely resistant to being labeled, and is aware of all the names people call him and things people say about him, but at the end of the day all of that is better than reducing him to a set of symptoms or a diagnosis. Finch wants to be treated like a person with agency, not like someone with a label floating over his head explaining all of his behaviors and feelings.
"You saved my life. Why couldn't I save yours?"
This quotation beautifully captures Violet's relationship with Finch. She recognizes that Finch pulled her through when she was drowning, that he helped her get back to her life, and she will never forget that. In this moment, she still hasn't accepted why he died, and is blaming herself for not doing more. Of course, where Finch could be a guide to Violet, she couldn't save him; no one could save him, because he was dealing with so many layers of complex things, more than what anyone could even see.
"For a minute, I can feel it: the sense of peace as my mind goes quiet, like I'm already dead. I am weightless and free. Nothing and no one to fear, not even myself."
This quote is found at the very beginning of the novel, setting out Finch's philosophy of death from the start: he sees a romanticized vision of death, a way to escape all the hardships in life and finally obtain peace and relaxation. The latter part of the quote makes the reader wonder who he is afraid of, and demonstrates the deep fear he has of himself—that is, of his brain, which can convince him to harm himself.
" . . . the great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody."
Finch obviously has a fixation with identity. He shows up to school in several different versions of himself, like he is always trying on a new self. His reputation precedes him, yet is somehow never consistent, and many, many people think he's a freak. But those versions don't matter, the one that matters is the one that Violet sees, the Finch that she loves and wants to be with.
"'The why is that none of it matters. Not school, not cheerleading, not boyfriends or friends or parties or creative writing programs or . . . It's all just time filler until we die.'"
Violet is despairing after the loss of Eleanor, and has lost all hope for a meaningful life. She can't understand what the point of anything is if we're all just going to die someday. Finch urges her to think about the fact that things can still be meaningful if they're going to end, and in fact, maybe knowing that they're going to end is what gives them meaning at all.
"When we're in the act of wondering, we need to be present, not watching it through a lens."
Here, there is an emphasis on Theodore being different to everyone else, as a boy of his age in the contemporary world is expected to record his life and live through a screen, which Niven uses as a form of satire due to the increase in technological mediation and the effect that social media has on newer generations. Violet expresses that by straight away coming to the decision to 'shoot a video' or 'write stuff down', to which Theodore prefers to live and experience the moment.
"The urge to be, to count for something, and, if death must come, to die valiantly, with acclamation—in short, to remain a memory."
To Finch, counting for something—mattering to someone, or something—is the best any of us can do in this life. There is no higher goal to aspire to, no deeper thing to achieve. He is fixated on the idea of memory, because to be remembered means to be kept alive, to be immortalized.
